


Oh, Darling My Heart's On Fire (For You)

by aiienharry



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Genderswap, Girl Direction, Happy Ending, Harry doesn't know her sexuality yet, Humor, No Smut, Road Trips, Sexual Tension, coming out sorta???, harry's pov only soz, lesbian louis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 08:45:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14305047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aiienharry/pseuds/aiienharry
Summary: At the young age of twenty-two, Harry has her whole life planned out, she was marrying the man of her dreams, moving in with him and his parents, and finding out what she wants to do with her life. Thirty minutes before the wedding starts Harry breaks down and decides to bail.She meets a familiar woman who never gave her the time of day in college, and said girl, ends up taking care of her as she gets drunk in a seedy bar in a town on the outskirts of Seattle in her wedding dress.They set off on a road trip, learning many things about each other and falling in love along the way. The more and more they start getting closer and closer to their destination, the more Harry is scared to say goodbye.Or, two girls fall in love on a road trip that was supposed to last a week and a half, but it ends up feeling like a lifetime.





	Oh, Darling My Heart's On Fire (For You)

**Author's Note:**

> I have been thinking about this fic for a while now, and I am so excited that I take the time to sit down and write it! This is the longest fic that I have ever written, and it toke a lot of planning and working everything out. Every town you see is a real town in each state that they travel through, the route that they take is a real route that I planned with google maps. 
> 
> I of course have to thank my wonderful artist [QuickedWeen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuickedWeen) who made wonder art work for this fic.
> 
> The inspiration for this came from two songs the first one is 'Ho Hey' - by The Lumineers and 'Heart's On Fire' by Passenger, which is where the title came from. Although Ho Hey is the biggest inspiration for this fic.

It’s twenty minutes before Harry is expected to walk down the aisle when it really hit her. Not only the fact that she is about to get married, like married _married_ , but also the fact that she doesn’t know if this is really what she wants.

It’s so silent in this back room, and she is so aware of how silent it is, it’s like she’s having an out of body experience watching herself sitting on the carpeted floor with shiny distant eyes. Closing them and taking big deep breaths, she tries to calm herself but to no avail. With every breath she takes, her hands start to shake a little more, and her breathing slowly gets worse as seconds turned minutes start to pass.

Harry had ordered everyone out of the room about five minutes ago with a lazy excuse that even she can’t believe they all bought (although, Gemma did snort and side eye her a little as she left with the crowd of women). She told them that she wanted to pray, and it had been met with instant understanding, even though she hasn’t been to church since she was nine, after her grandmother forced them to go on Easter. She sat in an itchy stark white dress with gloves and a big hat that was too big for her small nine-year-old head and she fidgeted in her seat the entire time, receiving two slaps on the butt from her grandma who hadn’t forced them to go to church since. She was miserable back then just as she is miserable now.

A soft white glow from the only window brightens the room, making the sequins of the dress cast shadows on the wall in an array of colors. She’s in a somewhat large backroom in a really old church that dates all the way back to 1899. (Yes Harry looked this up late at night after getting drunk on a cheap wine, although the details aren’t really that important). A mini statuette of Jesus depicted on the cross hangs on the wall right above her head, making it the only decoration in the room. The people waiting in the main hall chatting away while she’s in a back room trying to hold it all in.

She didn’t feel like crying, it was more of a panic feeling as her eyes darted between the door and the veil on the dingy vanity.

Harry leans against the wall, her breathing rapidly gets faster as she thinks about the wedding more and more. She thinks that maybe she really doesn’t want to get married to Ted, maybe they jumped the gun too early, and maybe they should have waited another year. _Maybe she shouldn’t even be getting married at all_ , her thoughts screamed. She shakes her head, trying her best to silence that voice in that back of her head nagging her about the real reason she doesn’t want to marry Ted.

“Breath,” Harry tells herself over and over again like a mantra, like those stupidly overpriced self-help guides that they sell to gullible people just to make a quick buck. “Just breath,” she whispers again, “You can do this. This should be the happiest day of your goddamn life. Stop fucking overthinking it!”

Harry clenches her fist tightly, wincing as her nails dig into her palm (she hates to admit it but it grounds her for a second). She stands up on shaky legs, the dumb dress making her flail as she slowly walks to where the vanity is, eyes still closed, she reluctantly opens them and looks at herself in the mirror.

Her hair is styled in a tight bun that makes her head throb, her makeup is subtle and natural, bland and boring. Her dress is a regular, stark white, poofy princess wedding dress with a long train and trims of lace around the edges and neckline. There are no designs, nothing that makes it stand out. It contrasts with her skin in an awkward way but she doesn’t complain, doesn’t feel like she has the right to complain. It’s ordinary and simple and again, boring. She looks over at the lace veil and contemplates again if this is really what she wants. She breathes out long and slow, slowly and reaching for it, her hands shake uncontrollably. When she notices the shakiness she retracts her hand back quick and sharp like she’s just been burned.  
  
She hears a small knock on the door and immediately knows it’s her mother. She looks up at the door and quickly puts a smile on her face. Her mother pops her head in, a huge smile etched on her face as she stares Harry up and down. “You almost ready hon?”  
  
She quickly nods, adrenaline pumping through her veins. “Yeah uhh, just a few more minutes. Gotta put on the veil and my shoes,”  
  
“Do you need any help?”

Harry sucks in a breath, immediately shaking her head no. “I got it. No worries,” 

“Well, I’m going to go sit down, everyone is waiting for you. Robin’s waiting for you outside when you're ready,” Harry nods again but more robotic and curt, not trusting herself to speak. Her fingers curl around the wooden vanity tightly, the wood wheezing under the pressure not yielding under her tight grip. Her breathing getting rapidly faster, anxiety fills her chest like dark grey gloomy clouds casting a shadow over the world below. Her dress starts to feel tighter and tighter by the minute as her mother continues to go on and on about how beautiful she looks and how happy she is for her. Harry just nods when appropriate.

When her mother finally leaves, and the door closes softly Harry crumbles to the floor and lets out a shaky breath, peering up at the ceiling of the old church. She puts her head in her glove-covered hands. _It’s been too fucking long_ , she thinks. A lump forms in her throat, she stays like that for a while until someone timidly knocks on the door.  
  
“Go away,” she says. They, of course, don’t leave, and when she hears the old door slowly creaked open, she whispers weakly, “Please leave me alone.” Quick footsteps start coming towards her, and arms wrap around her shoulders. Harry immediately realizes it’s her sister Gemma.  
  
“Gemma I-” she cuts her off.  
  
“What’s wrong babe? Is everything okay?” Gemma asks, rocking them back and forth.  
  
The lump in her throat is still there as she tries to talk, she manages to swallow it down. Harry lets out a watery laugh, clearing her throat. “I’m so fucking pathetic,”  
  
Gemma pulls back, her soft manicured hands tightly holding onto her shoulders. She gives Harry a pointed look and shakes her head. “No, you're not.”  
  
“I can’t even bring myself to marry the man that I'm supposed to love. Can’t even get up and walk down the fucking aisle and just get it over with.”  
  
“Harry, stop and calm down. Take some deep breath,”  
  
“And here I am cursing in fucking church, sitting on the dirty ass floor in my wedding dress because I don’t even know if…if I love him or not.” Harry hesitates when she says it and it’s silent right after. She can’t even believe that she really let it slip past her lips, out into the world and into the ears of someone whom she loves dearly. But _damn_ does it feel so fucking good to say it. “What’s wrong with me Gem? You know what I want to do right now? Leave out that fucking door and never come back.”  
  
Gemma continues hugging her closely to her chest despite the stupid dress being in the way, “There is nothing wrong with you Haz. If you don't want to marry him then just say it. You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself about this, if you feel like it’s not a good idea right now then I can bring him in and you can just tell him.”  
  
Harry explains, “But in the beginning when we were planning, everything was okay, I love the cake samples, and the flowers, and the fucking…” she racked her brain trying to find the right word, “venues we saw for the reception! But then when we started practicing, and he started calling me his wife I just—I started to really panic and more and more I wondered if I really want to do this if I even love him at all.”  
  
Gemma nods, “If you're having a lot of doubts then I personally think that you shouldn’t get married right now. Whatever you decide to do I support you a hundred percent.”  
  
They hug again as Harry slowly makes up her mind.  
  
Gemma helps her get up off the floor. She dusts her off and kisses her forehead, and just before she has to head back to her seat, Gemma kisses her cheek and whispers, “I left the door open to Charlie, the keys and your phone are in the glove compartment.” Harry nods slowly and watches her leave. She takes a deep breath and faces the mirror. Putting on the veil and grabbing her flowers, she walks out the door in the corridor. Her shoes still sat in the corner.  
  
“You ready, sweetheart?” Robin asks.  
  
Harry smiles softly at him and gives him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. She looks at him in the eyes for a moment, hand resting on his cheek. She pulls away and links arms with him, standing in front of the closed double doors. When Robin takes a step she stays back, making him stumble a bit.  
  
He looks back at her confused and whispers, “Is…everything alright Harry?”  
  
She shakes her head, feeling light-headed and sick, she unlinks their arms and turns to leave, but before she does she turns to Robin and says, “Tell Ted that I’m so sorry and that I hope he can forgive me one day.”  
  
Harry leaves out the chipped wooden church doors, the sun blinds her for a few seconds, but she continues on. She quickly makes her way over to Charlie, Gemma’s old Mustang she got from the seventies’ loving vintage car dealer. Robin calls out to her but she ignores him.  
  
Harry trips over her dress, dirty clings to the fabric as it rubs against the ground ripping the lace at the bottom. Her feet burn on the hot rocky asphalt, the transition from summer to fall bringing along the last amounts of heat before the weather drastically changes soon. The sun shines high in the sky, not a cloud can be seen, her face is hot, and sweat is pooling on her forehead. She wipes it before ripping her veil off and throws both it and the flowers to the side of the car.  
  
After having some trouble getting the dress inside Charlie, she starts up the car fast, putting it in reverse, speeding out of the parking lot as Robin looks on.

  
-

  
Harry drives around for awhile until she reaches Seattle. She stops for gas, getting weird looks from strangers, and drives off into the night again not having a clear destination. She makes up her mind to go to the nearest bar she can find, which happens to be called ‘Lucky’s’. She wanted to get as drunk as possible to forget everything for a bit. She parks in the small parking lot, sitting in her car for a few minutes contemplating if she really wanted to go in.  
  
She looks around at her surroundings, a skeevy motel sits across the street from the bar, older men and women who look a little too rich to be in this part of town go in 'with younger women and men hanging off their arms. A McDonald’s sits a few blocks to the right of the motel, a dirty patch of grass sits between them, cars parked on the dying patch, and a freeway is to the left of the bar a way down the street. Other than that it’s just random buildings that look condemned, ransacked, graffitied, and broken into.  
  
Harry blows out a breath and stares out the front window. She rolls her eyes, “Fuck it,”  
  
She grabs her phone and car keys before exiting the car. The dress gets stuck in between something and she falls down to the ground, the lace trim almost completely off. Her hands ache but she gets up, dusts herself off, and heads inside.  
  
And just like she dreaded everyone in the bar turns to look her.  
  
“Well this is awkward,” she murmurs to herself. Harry brushes it off finds a way to sit at the bar, the bartender comes over to her, a sly smile on her wrinkly face. Harry timidly looks around at her surrounding. The seedy bar was dimly lit, wood on every surface and half full of bumbling drunk guys trying to get lucky with women far out of their league, and women chatting up each other, avoiding the men like plagues in favor of each other. One half of the room was just the bar itself, lined with bottles and bottles of alcohol, a reddish neon light in the background illuminating said bar with tables, and chairs surrounding it. Most of the women stayed in this area, doing what Harry thinks which is flirting with each other, and the other half housed bearded burly men and typical bar games such as darts, pool, and strangely enough, some people were playing dominoes. Just a regular old bar with a cliche name, in a small town people passed by without a glance. People like Harry.  
  
“What would ya like ma’am?”  
  
“Umm…a Framboise Sangria, please. Thank you.”  
  
She puts her head down in between her arms, only sitting up when her drink is placed in front of her. She drank it slowly, coughing slightly before putting her head down again. She takes little sips of her drink here and there, but for the most part, she keeps her head low and ignores the looks that are being thrown her way.  
  
“So…was the reception at least nice?”  
  
Harry’s head shoots up, she looks to her left and squints at the girl to her left who just sat down next to her. “Wha…what are you talkin’ about?”  
  
“Just commenting on the wedding dress is all. Just tryna cheer you up, but it seems like it didn’t work. My apologies.” The girl says again, she looks strangely familiar. She has short hair styled in a soft fringe that actually doesn’t look bad on her, she’s wearing a red sweatshirt two sizes too big with black skinnies on. Harry squints even more at the girl, she _really_ looks familiar.  
  
“Do I…know you or something?”  
  
The girl smiles at her, eyes crinkling. “Pretty sure we went to college together…” Harry blinks, “I was the captain of the girl's footie team…” Harry blinks again, “My name is Louis. Louis Tomlinson. We had a crazy psych teacher together.” Harry’s eyes widen, her mouth forming an ‘o’ shape, “There you go,” Louis smiles brightly at her again.  
  
“Oh…umm oops,” Harry grimaces and shrugs.  
  
“Hi,”  
  
Harry rubs her temple, sipping the last bit of her drink. “Sorry, uh Louis. How’d you even know it was me?”  
  
Louis grins taking a few sips of her drink. She sighs before saying, “Pretty sure you are the only person who would walk around wearing, by far, the whitest wedding dress I have ever seen, in a dirty bar in a rather sketchy part of town.”  
  
“Well fuck you too Louis.” The bartender grumbles.  
  
“Sorry Red,” Louis says towards her. “You know I mean well.”  
  
Harry’s looks towards the tough looking bartender, her arms are cross and muscles bulging as she flexes a little. Harry notices that she has a sleeve of tattoos that go down to her fingertips and up to her shoulders. Intimidating.  
  
“So what’s with all of…that?” Louis motions towards the wedding dress, making Harry frown. “I mean you don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t wanna. I was just curious is all.”  
  
“I…” Harry pauses taking a deep breath, “Kinda realized that I didn’t want to get married to my now ex-fiance and left before I got married to him. Which makes me a fucking dickhead.”  
  
“So you just left him at the altar?”  
  
“I left before I even walked down the aisle,” Harry replied, kneading her fingers in her temple to try and get rid of a headache.  
  
Louis blows out a breath, “Well,” she pauses and they sit in silence for a few minutes. “I don’t know what to say. You're really young though. What are you twenty-two?” Harry nods, “It’s a little too young to be getting married, but I’m not one to judge. If you felt like he wasn’t the one you should not have been marrying him then. Obviously, you did the right thing by not going through with it.”  
  
Harry whines, “But isn’t it a dick move to just leave like that?”  
  
“Well yeah, it was.”  
  
Harry groans and orders another drink, this time a Long Island Iced Tea, she brings it to her lips and takes big gulps before saying, “‘M so scared to turn on my phone, Louis.” Harry looks down at the device, she stares at it for a few seconds before groaning and throwing her head back, “I’m such an idiot and I’m a horrible _horrible_ person to do that to him.”  
  
“Who were you about to marry?”  
  
Harry drinks her beverage in two big gulps before ordering a shot, she downs it and it burns down her throat making her gag a little. “Ted. Ted Michaels.”  
  
Louis watches her, “Huh, Harry Michaels.” Louis scrunches up her nose and drinks the rest of whatever is in the tall glass, “I prefer Harry Cox’s, but with an ‘x’ to keep it pg.” Harry giggles, “But Harry Styles is truly better than both. It’s like a name for a rock star.”  
  
Harry starts laughing uncontrollably, her eyes well up with tears. Louis soon joins her and the patrons at the bar look at them in amusement. “That’s my mother’s maiden name!”  
  
Louis takes a sip of her drink and shakes her head. “No fucking way that's true.”  
  
“Yeah!” Harry yells, “Oh my god, I’ve just realized that like…I could have been Harry,” she pauses for dramatic effect, “Cox. Holy fucking shit.” She continues laughing and orders another shot, downing it as soon as it’s been placed in front of her.  
  
“Slow down Curly Cox’s before you get hammered.”  
  
Harry leans over the bar and orders one more, “Good, this is the happiest I have felt all fucking _day_. Thank you, Lou, for distracting me, and thank you to the universe for strangely putting you here with me.” She starts swaying in tune with the music, her tummy feels funny and a warm fuzzy feeling takes over her whole body, and her face feels flush. She stops the humming and saying and turns to Louis. “‘M like…so drunk and happy that I didn’t marry, Ted. I would have been so damn miserable.”  
  
“You're really pretty when your drunk,” Louis mutters under her breath, taking a sip of her drink. Harry pouts and frowns at Louis’ comment, she tries to order something else but Louis stops her, wagging her finger. “Uh uh, no more anything for you, Curly.” Harry's heart starts beating faster, her stomach churns from the weight of the alcohol. Louis orders her a water, but Harry can barely hear it over the music. It feels like it’s getting louder, making her headache and her stomach ache worst.  
  
“Didya know the Long Island Iced Tea is equivalent to four beers?” Harry pouts, frown still prevalent on her face as her headache gets worse.  
  
Louis shakes her head no and smiles. “Of course you would know that, Curly.”  
  
“Do you think Ted hates me?”  
  
Louis shrugs her shoulders, “I don’t know, but I hope not.”  
  
Harry grins at Louis and starts babbling, “I think I'm gonna try and talk to him now. You know I’m ready, and I’m tipsy, and so what if he hates me. Right?” Harry grabs her phone and turns it on, snatching it away when Louis tries to take it. “It’s now or never Louis. I know I won’t have the courage to do it later so I'm gonna do it now m’kay?” Harry puts her passcode in and is immediately assaulted with an onslaught of messages and missed calls from Ted, Robin, her mother, Gemma, and Ted’s sister and mother. She starts sweating and her stomach churns more as she clicks on the messages from her family. They all a mixture of asking where she is, if she’s safe, and to come home immediately. The messages from Ted’s family are all the same except some of them they call her a selfish bitch and a horrible person for just leaving. Harry sorta agrees with some of them to some extent but she thinks being called a bitch is a little harsh. The one that really gets to her is a text from Ted that was sent an hour ago that reads:

 **FROM TED:** _I can’t believe you would do something likes this…If you didn’t want to be together you could have just said so instead of making me look like an idiot. Don’t bother calling. We’re done, Harry._  
  
Harry’s eyes start to well up with tears and her shoulders start shaking violently. “I’m such a horrible person,” Her voice cracks at the end and Louis immediately pulls her into a hug. “Almost everyone is worried about me, wondering if I’m safe and I’m just in a dingy bar getting drunk with someone that I barely remember from college.”  
  
Louis rubs her back, “It’s going to be okay, you are not a shitty person at all. You look like you couldn’t even hurt a fly, Curly. And I know just as well as anyone else that you didn’t mean any harm. In all honesty, you could've said something sooner, but at least you didn’t marry him knowing that you really didn’t love him.”  
  
Harry cries on Louis' shoulder for some time before pulling back and wiping her eyes. She grabs a napkin and blows her nose. “‘M so gross right now, _yuck_.” She laughs a little, biting her tongue before taking a sip of water. “I’m a right mess,”  
  
“Eh, nothing wrong with having a bit of a cry in a dinky bar while wearing a wedding dress after you’ve just run away from your wedding. It happens to all of us,” Louis rubs her shoulder, pulling her into another hug. “We've all been there, don’t worry Harry.”  
  
“I forget that at some point in our lives that we run away from our own wedding in a dress and met an acquaintance from college. Completely off topic but even though we didn't talk at all during the one class we had together in college, I remember you were always the jokester in class. Always wanted to make sure everyone was okay, that nobody you knew was getting picked on or left out. Your such a good person Louis, an absolutely amazing woman.”  
  
Louis blows out a breath, scratching the back of her head. “Wow Harry, now you're making me blush with all the uh, compliments. Jeez,”  
  
“I’m drunk…kinda and tired lemme compliment you, old lady.”  
  
Louis lets out a big laugh, her eyes crinkling. “Well damn, I’m only two years older than you Curly. Respect your elders and all that,”  
  
Harry giggles at Louis' response. They spend one more hour at the bar before heading out together. They talk for some time while Louis has a smoke, Harry telling her how she has nowhere to go tonight, and how she doesn’t feel safe driving at such a late hour.  
  
Louis throws the cigarette butt to the floor and crushes it beneath her dirty vans. She asks hesitantly, “I’m at one of the motels up the street for the night. You can leave your car here, and if you want you can…stay with me for the night?”  
  
Harry smiles nodding, “Thank you, Louis. That would be perfect.”

  
-

  
When Harry wakes up remembering almost nothing that happened yesterday night. She remembers running away, meeting Louis, and the nasty taste of the shots she downed still on her tongue. Harry pops her head from under the covers, squinty from the harsh light that comes through the open curtains, she peers down and sees that she’s in nothing but a huge grey t-shirt that is definitely not hers, and her own white panties. Her hair isn’t in a tight bun anymore, it’s cascading down her shoulders in loose frizzy ringlets. Her head is pounding and her mouth is drier than the Sahara Desert. Her body aches and all around she just feels awful and really shitty.  
  
“You're finally up!” Louis booms. Harry groans at the loud voice, shoving her head back under the covers. “Shit, sorry. I’ll be a lot quieter.” Louis whispers, “Uh…there is aspirin and water on the table beside you as well as your phone that is fully charged thanks to me, and your car keys to your beautiful _beautiful_ Mustang. I have McDonald’s over here when you are ready to eat. Nice and greasy.”  
  
Harry sighs, laying down for a few more minutes before getting up. She takes the aspirin, drinks the water and sits on the end of the bed. She tries to calm her stomach before eating, not wanting to throw up her food. She looks around at the brightly lit hotel room. A bed, a small table, and a worn out desk are the only things in the room. The carpet is dirty beyond repair, and the wall on the other unmade side of the bed has a big yellow stain. Harry shrugs, it’s not the worst place she’s slept. Senior year she and a group of friends stayed at an abandoned park just to watch the sunrise. She and two other girls stayed in one of the girls brothers van, all squished together under a blanket with crumbs from the sandwiches that messily devoured. It was one of the most uncomfortable and probably unsanitary moments in her short life, but it was also one of the best nights of her life.  
  
Harry sighs, putting her head in her hands. “Did I cry a lot last night Louis?”  
  
Louis sits down beside her, different outfit from last night. She’s wearing a grey jumper and black shorts. “Well—not a lot but it doesn’t matter right now. I want you to eat your breakfast, take a shower, and get dressed. Don’t worry, I have something for you to wear, and then we can figure out what to do. Don’t worry your little cute head about anything right now.”  
  
Harry follows Louis instructions. Her shower is longer than it should have been and the hot water cuts out on her, but it’s not her fault that she has a lot of hair. Sue her.  
  
When she gets out of the shower, Harry walks into the small hotel room, a towel wrapped around her body. When Louis sees her, she smiles and hands her a plain white shirt and grey sweatpants. Harry thanks her, walking back to the bathroom. She puts them on, not feeling too comfortable strolling around with no underwear, but she rolls with it. Harry walks over to the mirror and looks at herself. She has bags under her eyes, her lips are chapped, and her face is paler than usual. She takes a deep breath, eyes welling up with tears. A lump forms in her throat, she bites her lip, holding back a sob. She grabs onto the sides of the small sink and wipes the wet curls from her face. Her knuckles turn white as her grip tightens. She feels like a disgusting person, she knows what she did was horrible. What she did to Ted was horrible, not texting anyone back on her whereabouts, and letting them she was safe was such a dick move.  
  
Harry looks at her reflection, whispering to herself, “Your such a horrible fucking person,” She angrily whips her face, not stopping until her eyes and cheeks are red. She takes a stray towel scrunches her hair, trying getting rid of some of the moisture. When she walks back into the room a few minutes later, looking somewhat normal and not like she was just cried her eyes out in a dirty motel bathroom, she finds her wedding dress is in a huge plastic ziplock bag on the bed.

Louis looks up at her grinning, “Took me awhile but I somehow managed to get your dress in the bag. There is a little wear and tear at the bottom, and like, half of the lace is ripped off but yeah.”  
  
Harry walks over and sits down on the bed beside the bag, “Thank you again, Louis.”  
  
“It’s no problem at all,” Louis sits down beside her, “Are you…okay?”  
  
Harry shakes her head, “Honestly, no.” She sighs, “I dunno what I’m going to do.”  
  
Louis takes her hand in hers, massaging her knuckles. “If and when you go back home, I hope everything works out for the best.”  
  
Harry smiles up at her, “How do you always know what you say when someone's having a rough time?”  
  
Louis shrugs, rubbing a hand on her neck. “I just…say what seems right at the time while trying not to make whoever I’m talking to feel worse.”  
  
“I don’t want to go home and face the mess I've made,” Harry whispers, leaning her head on Louis' shoulder. She takes a deep breath, stepping back metaphorically, and looking at what’s all happened in the span of a few hours. In all honesty, it felt like a fucking dream.  
  
Louis wraps her arm around her and they just stay like that for some time, their breathing syncing up as time goes on. The motel room darkens, but quickly after lights up with sunlight, taking the slight chill in the room away. Harry cuddles more into Louis' side, feeling safe with Louis' arms wrapped tightly around her shoulder, fingertips rubbing into her arm.  
  
Louis pulls away soon after. “As much as I would love to sit here all day comforting and cuddling you,” Louis starts, “I, unfortunately, have to hit the road by one o'clock, before traffic gets too heavy.”  
  
Harry stands up. “Where are you going?”  
  
Louis stands up as well and grabs her bag, “I’m going on a road trip across the Pacific coast, starting here in Seattle and ending in Encinitas, California, which is where I am living at the moment.”  
  
Harry nods, taking in all the information, “That seems really cool. I’m probably gonna head over to Seattle to stay with my sister,”  
  
Louis nods as well, reaching over and grabbing her luggage and putting it by the door. Her jumper rises up showing her soft pudgy stomach. Harry looks away blushing, Louis catches her and gives her an amusing look. “Yeah, anyway it’s just gonna be me and my dog Scooby.”  
  
Harry perks up at the mention of Louis having a dog, “Really, where are they know?”  
  
“At this dog sitters house. I had stuff to do and didn’t want to leave them here all day yesterday.”  
  
“That’s cool,” Harry mumbles, “I’ve always wanted a dog growing up. What breed is it?”  
  
Louis laughs, “This lady in my old apartment buildings dog had four puppies and she was really old and couldn’t look after them sadly, so she gave them away for free. She gave me the last one which was the runt of the litter, but I still love him so much.” Louis starts tidying up the room. “When I had gone to the vet for a cleaning they told me he was Golden Retriever,”

Harry starts putting the bedding in a pile in the middle of the bed, trying to be somewhat useful. “My sister, Gemma doesn’t really like dogs so all we had was a lot of cats growing up. I wanted to name all of them Tinker-bell, but I was outvoted all the time.”  
  
“Aw,” Louis chuckles, “Maybe in the future, you can get your own special cat and name them Tinker-bell.”  
  
“Maybe I will,”  
  
They continue laughing and talking until the room is clean. Harry grabs her phone, the keys, and her bag before helping Louis grab her luggage. They dropped off the keys at the front desk and leave. The sun is shining brightly in the sky, a slight chill in the air that makes Harry shiver. The area around them is isolated except for the few people milling around outside the motel. Harry helps Louis bring her things to her car, and when everything is packed up they stare at each other in silence. Harry notices Gemma’s car is right beside Louis' even though she doesn’t remember driving it over here last night. She smiles, “Thanks for moving the car over here,”  
  
Louis replies back instantly, “No problem, it was nice seeing you again, even if it was under unfortunate circumstances.”  
  
Harry agreed, “It was nice seeing you again also. And a big thank you for everything you’ve done for me.” There is genuine sincerity in her voice when she says it, she wants to keep thanking Louis over and over and over again for everything she has done for her in the past hour. Making her laugh when she was sad, taking care of her after getting drunk, letting her borrow her clothes, talking to her about her problems and being honest with her. The list goes on. Harry has never met anyone as selfless as Louis, she’s the same girl from college, except more mature and better at giving pep talks when you really need them. “I truly can’t thank you enough,”  
  
Louis looks away, blushing before saying, “Don’t worry about it, it would have been rude of me to just pretend I didn’t know you and let you wallow in your own sadness and just continue on my merry way.”  
  
They hug before getting into their own cars, Harry places the bag in the passenger's seat and starts the ignition. She rolls down her window and waves goodbye at Louis before pulling off.  
  
Harry starts the drive back into the city. After half an hour passes she calls Gemma to let her know she will be arriving soon.  
  
“Harry you fucking—where the hell are you?” Gemma yells through the phone. Harry winced and puts her on speaking. “When I told you about me leaving the keys for Charlie I didn’t mean it literally.”

Harry shoots back, “Than why did you tell me in the first place. That was literally you prompting me to go ahead and leave.”

“Okay, I admit that I did prompt you, but why didn’t you fucking call or tell anyone that you were okay! Everyone has been worried fucking sick about you, you dickhead! Mom was crying and Robin’s been upset and Ted,” Gemma’s voice gets quieter after mentioning him, barely above a whisper. “Ted says he doesn’t want to see you again.”  
  
Harry sighs, “I know, I know. I’m so sorry for leaving the way I did and not telling anyone. I’m in a town close to Seattle called…Poulsbo so I’ll be there in a few hours.”  
  
“You fucking better, missy,”  
  
“I really am sorry. Is mom or Robin near you?”  
  
“No, they drove back to Richmond a few hours ago,” Harry nods even though no one is in the car. It’s silent for a few minutes before Gemma's voice starts filtering through the speaker, “I- Harry I’m so sorry about what happened with Ted,”  
  
“‘S okay,”  
  
“No, it’s not, if you didn’t feel ready to marry him then why didn’t you say anything to anyone?”  
  
Harry’s hand grips the steering wheel tighter, “I told you Gem, I said that I don’t think I want to marry him. That I don’t really love him.”  
  
“Yeah, you did, didn’t you. I knew you guys were moving too fast.”  
  
“Really?” Harry briefly looks over at the plastic bag filled with her wedding dress before looking back at the road. She remembers the eventful day when she had got it. She took her mom and Gem along with her to a bridal shop an hour away from Richmond. It took six dresses before she had found the one. What made her fall in love with it was the long train with lace around the edges, and lace sleeves that went off the shoulder. It was the perfect fitted gown, it hugged her in all the right area’s, and she cried when she saw herself in the mirror. Unfortunately, it was _way_ out of her mother's price range and she ended up settling for the poofy plain princess dress.  
  
Gemma shouts through the phone, “You’re fucking twenty-two, Harry! You have your whole life ahead of you. You could travel around the US or—I fucking don’t know, uh go to the UK and just experience the world. You have your whole life to figure out who you want to be with and marry. I always thought you were moving to fast ya know?”Gemma pauses for a second, “But from what I saw, and this just what saw, it was all him. The wanting to have a wedding after popping the question two months before, having a venue already picked out, a house where you were going to live for the rest of your life. Everything was just moving too fast too quickly.”  
  
Harry considers what Gemma says, but she knows that it still doesn’t excuse the way she told him that she didn’t want to marry him. No excuse as to leave her family hanging and unaware if she’s somewhere safe, and why she ran away. “You can’t blame everything on him, Gemma. I was going along with everything. I was fine when it started, but it just all got to be too much. And I realized almost too late that I didn’t want to marry him.” Harry silently thanks _God_ that she didn’t marry him after she understood that it would have been a huge mistake. She knows that they would have miserable together.  
  
“Well, you are right, you shouldn’t have run away like that. It was really a dick move, and you need to call him.” Gemma sighs, “But look, I love you and I need to see your stupid face. Make it here safe alright?”  
  
“Love you too Gem,”  
  
Harry’s just about to hang up when Gemma says, “There’s a twenty in the glove compartment! Get gas! See ya, and make sure you call mum! Love you mwah!”  
  
“Okay, okay! Love you too, mwah!” Harry sets her phone down in the cup holder. She drives for a while listening to whatever is playing on the radio and thinking about everything that’s been happening. She belts the lyrics to some Britney Spears song, ignoring the looks she receives from passing cars.  
  
She tries to call her mom, but nobody picked up. She tries Robin, and after the third ring, he answers, “How are you doing Harry? Are you safe? Anne! Harry’s on the phone,”  
  
Harry smiles sadly, “I’m okay, I’m okay.”  
  
Robin lets out a sigh of relief, “That’s so good sweetheart, we were so worried about you. Where are you now?”

“I’m going to Gemma’s house,”  
“That’s good, I love you so much and no one is angry at you sweetheart. Here’s your mother, she wants to speak with you.”  
  
“Thank you,” Harry replies, “And I love you so much as well.” Harry hears quick shuffling before her mother is put on the phone.  
  
She can hear her mother cursing over the phone making her anxious.  
  
“Is…everything alright?”  
  
“Oh, my baby. Are you okay? Is everything alright?” Harry can hear the worry in her mother voice as she speaks,  
  
She hates that she made them worry this much, “Yeah, I’m heading to Gemma’s. I’m like forty-five minutes away.”  
  
“Okay that’s good but,” Her mother murmurs, sorrow in her voice. “Everyone is so worried about you love, you just left with no explanation. Gemma had to tell us what was going on,” She pauses for what feels like an eternity. Tears well up in Harry’s eyes, and she pulls over on the side of the road. It wasn’t a busy street, trees line up on each side of the road. She was completely alone.  
  
“I’m so sorry mama,”  
  
Her mother immediately shh’s her, “Oh Harry, please don’t cry my love. I didn’t mean to upset you.”  
  
Harry draws in a big breath, “I ruined everything for everyone. I’m so selfish,” She furiously wipes her tears, She takes many deep breaths hoping to calm herself. Her hands shake as her grip tightens on her phone. Snot runs over her mouth but she can’t seem to bring herself to care.  
  
Her mother pleads, “Please, please answer me, baby.”  
  
Harry sucks in a breath, her voice shakes with each word she says. “I’m so—so damn sorry. I didn’t mean to cause this much trouble. Everyone hates me, you hate me. If I could change everything and go back, and marry him I would have. I-I wouldn’t have done what I did if I knew how much it would have hurt you.” She continues babbling on before her mother stops her.  
  
“Harry, calm done. I need you to breath. Everything is okay. I don’t hate you, no one hates you at all sweetheart. If you weren’t ready to marry him that is completely okay, I don’t hold it against you. No one does baby.”  
  
Harry shakes her head no, wiping the snot that’s accumulating under her nose. “I’m a horrible, horrible person.”  
  
Her mother shushes her, “No you are not. I don’t want to hear any of that okay? What you did wasn’t bad, and many people do it, okay. How you did it wasn’t stellar, or ideal, but I would have rather you’ve done it a billion times before you ever marry someone who you don’t love.”  
  
Harry nods and takes in everything her mother says. She calms herself down, letting out little gasps of air. After a while, she calms herself down. She lets out a watery laugh as more tears cascade down her face, “‘M so sorry,”  
  
“It’s okay sweetheart. I promise you I’m not mad at all, no one is mad. Where are you now?”  
  
Harry leaned her head against the steering wheel. “I’m pulled over on the side of the road,”  
  
Her mother sighs, “Are you well enough to drive? I don’t like you being out there all by yourself with no one around to protect you,”  
  
Harry laughs again, “There is no one here mom. I-I’m all alone,” She looks down at her phone at sees that it’s about to go dead. She panics, shuffling through the glove compartment looking for a charger. She groans, “Mom my phone is about to go dead, and Gemma doesn’t have a damn charger!”  
  
“It’s okay sweetie. Call me back when you reach Gemma’s okay?”  
  
“O-okay, I love you, mom!” Harry shouts before her phone turns off.  
  
She leans her head back and exhales a shaky breath of air. The sounds of her ragged breathing are the only thing that’s heard inside the car as she shifts her head to look out of the window, she stares at the tall trees that look like they go miles high. The afternoon sunlight peeks through the trees, casting a shadow onto the car.  
  
A deer jumps out from the brush and passes in front of her car startling her. She stares in awe before it gets startled by an oncoming car and runs back into the trees. The worn out upholstery squeals as she shifts in her seat, she sets both hands on the steering wheel waiting a few seconds, before starting up the car and drives off. Tree’s past by in blurs into and soon they turn into houses, and houses turn into small outlets, and small outlets turn into big plaza’s.  
  
Harry plays with the twenty dollars in her hand deciding to stop at the gas station. She pulls in next to a pump and goes in to pay, using the rest of the money to buy a pop and some chips. She heads out to pump the gas dropping her gazes down to the ground as she walks to the car, trying to balance everything in her hands.  
  
“Need help there Curly?” Louis stands there with a huge smile on her face, hands crossed leaning against Charlie. Harry, the graceful giraffe that she is, drops everything in her hand. “Shit! Didn’t mean to scare you!” Louis says, immediately helping her pick everything up, placing the items back in her hand.  
  
Harry gawks at her, “Wha—what are you doing here?” She opens the car and puts everything inside. She gives Louis a weird look before putting gas in the tank. When she’s finished she looks over at Louis. She’s wearing the same thing from this morning, but sunglasses are perched on top of her nose, and a big sandy dog sits next to her. “Umm, did you follow me all the way out here?”

Louis carts a hand through her short sandy brown hair, a smile inched its way onto her face. Her nose twitches when she says, “I couldn’t stop thinking about ya,”  
  
Harry nods, taking in what she said while trying not to smile. “Oh really. And why is that?”  
  
Louis walks forwards, taking her sunglasses off. “I know I’m not your therapist or whatever, but I really think you could use a vacation.”  
  
Harry nods again, smirking. “So,” She says to herself, her hand stroking her chin. “I should take a vacation.”  
  
Louis glares at her, “I just said that, Curly. Look, I really want you to come on this trip with me. We can have a lot of fun, driving down the coast and shit. Eating junk food, staying in motels, sleeping in the car, getting drunk, and smoking pot, taking Scooby here for long walks, ya know just regular road trip fun.” Louis rubs Scooby’s head, his tongue sticks out as he leans into her touch, whining.  
  
Harry thinks it over quickly, and it actually isn’t a bad idea. A few days on the road with a beautiful woman that helped keep her safe and sound. She gave her good advice and let her borrow her clothing, albeit a size too small, but it’s truly the thought that counts. And Harry knows Louis’ heart was in the right place.  
  
Harry smiles madly, making sure her dimples are showing. “Okay I’ll go with you,” Louis looks giddy when Harry says it making her laugh, “Although, I have to go and see my sister before we go. I have clothes there, and I need to tell her where we're going so she doesn’t worry about me. It’s only ten minutes away from here, it’s 800 Seneca Street.”  
  
Louis shakes her head, “Of course, of course. I have all of my shit in my car ready to go. We get going, I’ll drive behind you to your sisters, and you’ll do what you have to do.” They agree on the plan and head back to their own cars, but Harry pauses before entering Charlie. She smiles and looks back towards Louis, who is helping Scooby get into the backseat. She walks over and leans against the hood of Louis’ car. When Louis is done putting Scooby up, she looks towards Harry and grins, Harry looks away blushing. Louis asks, “What are you doing?”  
  
“Nothing,” Harry mumbles twiddling her fingers. Louis walks over and stops in front of her, a curious look on her face. Harry hops off of the car and pulls Louis into a hug. She lays her head on her shoulder, rocking them back and forth. “Thank you,” Harry mutters into her hair.  
  
Louis hugs her back, equally as tight, wrapping her arms around her waist. “Your welcome,” They part when a car honks at them, trying to get to the pump. Harry giggles, which in return makes Louis giggle, and in return makes the blue Sudan honk at them again. Harry jogs to the car, waving back at Louis before getting inside. She starts up the car and they head off to Gemma’s apartment. It takes them an extra fifteen minutes to get there. Ten minutes because of traffic. Five minutes because there was nowhere to park so they ended up parking in a Starbucks parking lot across the street. Harry gets out and pockets her phone and the keys, she takes the plastic bag holding her wedding dress, hoping Gemma will have a place to put it.  
  
“This is Gemma’s swanky new place,” Harry says, “She just move here from Richmond.” They walk into the building, Harry pages Gemma to let her in, “Gemma, it’s me, Harry. Buzz me up!” The door buzzes and Harry looks back at Louis, they walk through the lobby and go to where the elevators are.  
  
Louis hums asking, “Why move from Richmond?”  
  
“I don’t know. We grew in Richmond which is like,” Harry pauses as she presses the button for the elevator. “A small beach town, just a whole bunch of pine tree’s, no malls unless you go into the city, and like barely any fast food restaurants. It was basically mom and pop diners and stores. Everybody knew everybody, and Gemma sorta hated the feel of a small town so she moved to the _always_ gloomy Seattle.”  
  
They get onto the elevator, and Harry presses the four button where Gemma’s floor is. Harry leans against the mirrored panel opposite Louis. They stand in silence as they wait for the elevator to arrive. Harry looks over at Louis and notices the way she’s always biting her lip, trying to pick the skin off. Harry continues to stare until the elevator doors open, watching Louis’ mannerisms until she looks over at Harry with a sly look on her. Like she knows Harry was staring the whole time. Harry turns away, a blush forming on her cheeks.  
  
Louis opens her mouth to speak as Harry leads the way to Gemma’s apartment. “I grew up in San Francisco,”  
  
Harry ogles her, “No fucking way. I have always wanted to go to San Fran,”  
  
Louis gives her an amusing look, “San Fran? Really?” she shakes her head and smirks, “It’s so beautiful. That’s where I want to like, properly settle down in. A nice apartment, a decent job I love, and Scooby.”  
  
They stop in front of Gemma’s door, standing opposite of each other. “Really, what about a boyfriend or something?” Harry waggles her eyebrows.  
  
Louis blushes and awkwardly scratches the back of her neck, “Uhh, I’m actually exclusively into women only. I’m a _lesbian_ ,”  
  
Harry’s eyes widen, her mouth is agape, and she feels super embarrassed to make such an assumption like that. “Oh, I didn’t mean to like-”  
  
Louis cuts her off with a wave of her hand, “It’s fine, it’s fine.”  
  
Harry shakes her head, mortified. “No, no it’s not fine. I shouldn’t have made that assumption,”  
  
Louis grimaces, “It’s okay Harry. I promise I know you didn’t mean any harm.”  
  
“And I’m not like…you know. Uhm, a _homophobe_ or anything.”  
  
“I know you aren’t.”  
  
“Okay, cause it doesn’t bother me one bit that your-”  
  
Harry gets cut off again, but this time it’s because of the door creaking open, and Gemma standing in the doorway with an amused smile on her face. She’s dressed in nothing but a robe and pajama bottoms. Her usual.  
  
She looks them up and down slowly before asking, “Are you two just gonna stand there or are you going to come inside?” Gemma looks between them again, first Harry then Louis, before she excuses herself so she can get dressed. Louis and Harry stared at each other for a brief moment before stepping inside.  
  
Gemma place is modern, but cozy at the same time. The walls are a creamy beige color and the floor is a dark hardwood. Many different pictures line the walls of the hallway as you enter, mostly of family pictures she had copied before she moved. Harry looks at the picture of her and Gemma as little girls on Halloween, angry looks on their faces. Harry, three years old, is dressed up in a lamb costume and Gemma, seven years old is dressed up as Little Bo-peep, from the old nursery rhyme. Louis walks up behind her and lets out a boisterous laugh when she sees it.  
  
Louis touches the frame lightly with her fingers. “This is probably the cutest picture I have ever seen, excluding all of my childhood photos, because I was one stunning child,” Louis smirks and Harry giggles slightly, “But why are you dressed as a little lamb?”  
  
“It was Halloween, and we were in trouble for sneaking out of the house in the morning and going into the backyard to play. Which we had got sick from, because I was only wearing pull-ups, and Gemma was wearing a nightshirt. So anyway, to push us my mom had us dress like Little Bo-peep and the lamb.” Harry sits down on the plush black couch and pulls over her two suitcases. “I think I really didn’t know what was going on, so I saw that Gemma was mad and I copied the face she had made.”  
  
Louis plopped down next to Harry, stretching her arms over the back of the couch and crossing her legs. She peered over Harry’s shoulder, her breath tickling her neck a little. “Make sure you take a rucksack if you have it, so you can put in things for hygiene, or just put about anything you want inside.”  
  
Gemma comes out of her room in pajamas, carting a comb through her lilac hair. She looks at Harry suspiciously before turning her attention to Louis. “And why would she need to do that huh?” Gemma growled.  
  
“Uh…cause we are going on a road trip?” Louis looks towards Harry with a curious look in her eyes making Gemma turn her attention to her.  
  
And with everyone's eyes on her, Harry looked to Gemma and then to Louis. “Uh, about that,” Harry laughs nervously, “I’m going on a small road trip with Louis to Encinitas.”  
  
Gemma glares at her, “Why are you going on a road trip with Louis to Encinitas?”  
  
Harry twirls the ends of her hair around her finger. “I just think it would be a fun trip, plus you were the one that told me to explore the world and all of that,”  
  
Gemma shrugs her shoulders, “And?”  
  
Harry scoffed, “Why are you so mad all of a sudden? And if you don’t want me to go it doesn't even matter because I am an adult and I’m going anyways.”  
  
“What if she turns out to be a serial killer.” Gemma bellows, pointing a manicured finger at Louis who is just looking at them back and forth as they bicker, “I don’t even know who she is, which means you can’t go.”  
  
Harry frowns and squints her eyes, abandoning putting together her suitcase in favor of turning her full attention to Gemma. “Fine, if you want to know about her so bad then ask Louis questions. I’m going to go pack my bag,”  
  
Harry grabs her two suitcases and drags them into Gemma’s room. She searches the room for a rucksack and ends up taking an empty one from the back of the closet. It’s dark purple and plain with two small holes and a few rips. Harry reopens her suitcases and takes out her phone charger. She puts her phone on the charger and leaves the room with the bag so she can go to the bathroom and steal a thing of shampoo and soap from Gemma. When she passed them Louis and Gemma are surprisingly laughing and having a seemingly private conversation. Both quickly turn to look at her when she walks out. She scrunches her nose up.  
  
Harry stops and scowls at them, “Whatever Gemma is telling you is not true.” She turns and continues the short walk to the bathroom. She takes a piss, washes her hands, and grabs a spare toothbrush and toothpaste. When she walks out they're laughing again. “Gemma fuck off,” Harry says.  
  
Gemma looks at her surprised, “Wha—I didn’t even do anything!”  
  
“Fuck off!”  
  
Harry walks back inside the bedroom and finished packing her bag. She changes into a matching pair of bra and panties. She throws on some black denim shorts and a white muscle shirt that says _'HOT 'N HARD'_ in bold red letters on the back with a cool graphic. She feels a little self-conscious because her armpits aren’t fully shaved, but she gets over it for the time being. Harry looks at herself in the mirror, she frowns and looks down, adjusting her boobs before putting on some old white converse. After throwing the clothes she won’t be needing in a bag, she steals one of Gemma’s glasses, grabs her wallet, and walks out with one of the suitcases and rucksack.  
  
Louis and Gemma’s riveting conversation seems to have died down, and Louis practically trips over the coffee table to help Harry carry her bags. Harry tries waving her off, “I have it, Louis.”  
  
“Nah, I got it. I'm just gonna pop this down in the car and uh…wait for you there.” Louis waves at Gemma as she leaves, “It was nice meeting you, Gemma.” She gives Gemma her widest smile before leaving.  
  
“She’s a very nice girl ya know.”Gemma says, “She’s your type to a _t_ ,”  
  
Harry looks at her confused, “What are you talking about? But I’m not-”  
  
Gemma waves her off, “Sure you aren’t. Look,” She gets up and walks over to Harry, pulling her into a tight hug. “I want you to have a fun time okay little sis,”  
  
Harry scrunches up her nose, “Why are you calling me ‘little sis’ and being all cryptic?” Gemma glares and pinches her arm twice, “Ahh! What the fuck Gemma. What was that for!?”  
  
“That’s for bailing and not telling anyone where you were going,” She hits her upside the head, “Dummy! Don’t do it again! I made Louis go over all the areas you would be stopping at, and she is to call me if you try and do anything stupid.”  
  
Harry pushes Gemma away, “Stop hitting me! And stop making people babysit me… _dummy_.”  
  
Gemma pushes her back, “Don’t call me dummy, dummy! Respect your elders.” Gemma grabs Harry’s face and squishes it, Harry slaps her hand away, while Gemma doubles over laughing.  
  
“It wasn’t even that funny! And I’m leaving _asshat_ , can you please tell mom and Robin where I will be at. My phone is still dead. Here are your stupid car keys,” Harry chucks them at Gemma, hitting her on her shoulder before she runs like a bat out of hell when Gemma starts chasing her. She’s running down the hall when she looks back at Gemma and sticks out her tongue, yelling down the corridor. “Thanks for the rucksack and sunglasses! Love you Gem! Mwah!” Harry kisses the palm of her hand and blows it towards Gemma who pretends to catch it and puts it over her heart.  
  
“Fuck you, thief! But I love you too! Mwah!” Gemma slams her door as soon as Harry gets inside the elevator. A quick rush of adrenaline filters it’s way into Harry’s heart. She looks at herself in the elevator glass doors, a shit-eating grin on her face that won’t go away no matter how much she tries to put on a poker face. She’s so happy it’s almost criminal, she never expected that this was the way her life would turn out. She’s going on a mini road trip with someone who she would have never expected, instead of being married in her early _early_ twenty’s. Harry brings out her phone and opens Snapchat, turning on the filters and laughing her ass off as he face contorts and turns into a dog. The elevator doors open on the third floor and she’s standing face to face with an older woman and her little dog.  
  
“Uh, hi,” Harry says trying to be polite. The woman rolls her eyes and stands as far away from her as possible. Harry hums and breathes in deeply before exhaling, feeling completely awkward. And when the elevator finally reaches the lobby she quickly leaves the elevator, tightening her grip on the rucksack. “Well, that was pleasant.” She whispers, “Love being judge by little old ladies.” Harry skips outside and walks across the street to Louis’ car. She climbs into the passenger seat and sighs, “This is going to be so fucking fun,”  
  
Louis beams, “It really is. I can feel it in my bones,”  
  
“Yeah, in your old lady bones,”  
  
Louis reaches over and slaps Harry’s shoulder, keeping it there and messaging the area. She looks offended but also amused at the same time. “I’m not two years older than you, youngin’. Plus it’s not even that much of a gap,” Louis’ grip tightens on the steering wheel and she clears her throat. “Anyways, I calculated and the trip is thirty-one-hour trip, which is like a day and a half or something,” She switches through the radio stations, fiddling with it before finding one that plays weird indie music that Harry would never admit she loves to listen to in her spare time. “But because we're going to be making a lot of stops, and spending most of our time going to various beaches, it will take a little longer. But…the longer the better,”  
  
Harry pulls her legs to her chest scratching the inside of her thigh. She frowns at the little hair follicles that are growing back fast, suddenly she starts feeling self-conscious. Rubbing her knee when a joke pops up in her head. She turns to Louis and murmurs, “That’s what she says.”  
  
Louis stares at her, “Uh…okay?” Harry watches her think it over before she bursts out laughing, “Oh! I was like—so fucking confused on what you were talking about. Wow,” Louis gives her a look, “That was the worst comedic timing ever. You can’t just say it like after a minute has passed.” Louis continues to rant and rave about how horrible Harry’s timing is making her laugh until tears form in her eyes. A warmness spreads from her chest to her toes startling her. It makes her shiver slightly as she stares at Louis.

“It’s like…Oh my god, please tell me you aren’t one of those people that tell horrible jokes that aren’t remotely funny.”

Harry wipes her tears and fully sits up. “Knock knock,”  
  
Louis rolls her eyes and groans, “Please don’t do this to me, God!”  
  
“Knock Knock!” Harry shouted.  
  
“Who is there?” Louis said. Harry grinned making Louis roll her eyes again, “Please for the love of—get on with it!”  
  
“A broken pencil!”  
  
Louis grits her teeth, “A broken pencil who?”  
  
Harry barks out a laugh before she can even get the punchline out. She wheezes, “Never mind it’s pointless,” She slaps her knees and doubled over in her seat laughing, trying to sell the joke. Louis gives her an amusing look but she doesn’t laugh. She shakes her head and turns her eyes towards the road. Still not even a chuckle. “Oh come on!” Harry says in between gasps, “That was amazing,”  
  
“That joke was so bad, so very bad, that I think I just died and went to hell.”  
  
Harry pouts and crosses her arms, she purses her bottom lip and gives Louis sad eyes. “Knock Knock?”  
  
“Who’s there?”  
  
"Cow’s go."  
  
"Cow’s go who?"  
  
Harry holds in her laughter, biting her bottom lip, “No you silly _goose_! A cow goes _moo_ ,” Louis’ dog, Scooby, who has just woken up from his nap, sits up and yawns. He then immediately starts barking from the back.  
  
“Look what you’ve done Harry.” Louis jokes, “Poor Scooby will probably have nightmares from your horrible, horrible jokes,”  
  
Harry lightly pushes Louis’ shoulder, “Whatever, you know you love my jokes. I should quit my job and become a comedian.”  
  
Louis shakes her head laughing, “So what do you do anyway?”  
  
Harry shrugs, “Well, I should be in grad school but I decided to put it off. When I was in high school I wanted to be a lawyer but, I dunno, I just decided not to. I have a degree in Sociology, but I don’t know what to do with it. I was an intern for this company but I sorta quit.”  
  
Nodding along Louis says, “Well, I think there are a lot of things you can do with a Sociology degree. Bit of advice, don’t strain yourself trying to find the perfect job right now. You may have a change of heart in the future. Plus, you are really young.”  
  
Harry had always been fascinated with photography not be quite honest. But from an early age, she was told that it wasn’t a real stable job. So she suppressed her artistic urges and thought about a more practical job that she could love just as equally as photography. Nothing meshed well with her so she chose a Sociology degree because it seemed interesting enough, and she loved the classes she toke. Harry sighs and turns up the radio. “Anyways, I think we should stop and feed Scooby, take him for a walk, and then go somewhere to feed Harry. We should also go to the store and get snacks so Harry can munch on them later,” Harry quickly adds, “And Harry has her wallet in her bag so you don’t have to pay for anything.”  
  
Louis nods, “Louis likes that idea very much, but she will only take Harry to the store on one condition,”  
  
“What’s that?” She prompts.  
  
“Hold up Curly-Sue, lemme park real quick.” Louis mumbles, parking in a parking lot for what looks to be a small park, they waste no time and quickly get out of the car. Louis puts Scooby on a leash while Harry stands on the rocky path waiting. She yawns, stretching her legs and arms like a cat, standing on her tiptoes. Louis flinches and peers over at her, “Jeez, Daddy long legs. You almost hit me in the head with you gigantic hands and arms,” Harry sticks her tongue out and Louis gives her the finger.  
  
“Don’t be jealous, _shorty_.”  
  
Louis punches her arm lightly, “I’m not that _short_!”  
  
“Debatable,” Harry laughs.  
  
Louis walks past Harry with a glare on her face. She opens the trunk, bringing out a bag of dog food, two bowls, and a huge container of water that was sitting in an ice box. She fills them both up and places them down for Scooby to eat, rubbing his head as he does so. “Oh! I almost forgot to tell you, we can go to the store, but you can’t tell any more terrible jokes.”  
  
Harry puts her hand over her heart, “How fucking _dare_ you! My jokes are absolutely a-mazing. Don’t be jealous because you can’t come up with something like that on the spot.”  
  
Louis stops petting Scooby and stands up, giving her a look of disbelief. “Oh _please_ ,” she sassed, “You got those all off the internet.” Harry tried to say a good come back, but she came up empty. Louis, noticing her silence, smirks and says, “You can’t fool me Styles,” She tilts her head and crossed her arms, making her look even more like a gym coach from the eighties with the grey sweatshirt, grey joggers, and white tennis shoes. Her socks were black, and her short hair disheveled like she had comb through it with her fingers a thousand times. She looked really fucking good in a sweaty gym teacher outfit, and it made Harry blush like a damn schoolgirl, and she suddenly got sweaty.

She sucked in a breath and turned her head looking out at the empty playground. It was a simple park, with many pathways, and trees everywhere as far as the eyes could see. An all wooden playground was smacked dubbed in the middle. It was peaceful and quiet.

In an attempt to change the subject Harry asks, “So where are we anyway?”

Louis packed up Scooby’s things, and they started walking together side by side onto a pathway. “Well, my good lady, we are in Belfair, Washington. At our next stop, we can get food, take pictures, go to the beach. Then we’ll we on our way.” Louis pauses before she continues to babble on as they walk Scooby down the dark stone path. “What we wanted to do is take U.S. Route 101, but we won’t see all of the coasts if we do that, so I, like the genius I am, modified it a bit so we will, for the most of the trip, be able to. Some parts we obviously won’t. But like I said previously, it is supposed to be a day and a half trip, but that’s boring so I’m going to try and stretch it out as much as I can.”  
  
Harry nods and reaches down to scratch behind Scooby’s ear. The dog preens at it and leans into Harry’s touch, “I've never been on a road trip before.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
Harry nods, “We never really went anywhere when I was growing up, just stayed in the same town and take trips to the beach.”  
  
Ecstatic, Louis says, “There is so much shit to do in San Francisco it’s crazy! Mostly I stayed at the record shop on Stockton Street. It was a place that everyone and their mother knew about,” Louis paused as they rounded a turn and started to head back to the car. “I got a job there, which was really hard to do, and I mostly smoked cigs while being a music snob.” Louis blows out a breath and tucks one of her hands in her back pocket, “I could totally see you being an art snob and going to MoMA a lot.”  
  
Harry, pretending to be offended, hips check Louis. “I’ll have you know that I was a good suburban girl that went to a Catholic school,”  
  
Louis gave Harry a weird look, “What school, and what does that have to do with you being an art snob?” They rounded another corner and walked back to the car. Harry sat on the trunk while Louis bends down to pet Scooby.  
  
Harry started moving her legs back and forth, smiling at the cute scene in front of her. “I went to Seattle Preparatory School. I actually consider myself more of a music snob than an art snob, but I love art too.”  
  
Louis grins, “Oh really, what kind of genre do you usually listen to?”  
  
Harry lifts her head up to the sky. She leans back, the metal digging into her elbows The sun heats up her face, “Mostly rock I guess. I freakin’ love Fleetwood Mac, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix.” After she’s done listing she rolls her shoulders and looks down at Louis who looks deep in thought. She wiped the sweat pooling at her brow and hops off the trunk, almost tumbling into Louis. “Shit! Ow!” she hisses. Her palms stinging from the rocky asphalt.  
  
Louis breaks out of her trance and squeaks out a big belly laugh. “Jesus Bambi! You're like a newborn horse!”  
  
Harry rolls her eyes and stands up straight, giving Louis the finger. “Har har har,”  
  
Loui stands up as well, walks over and grabs her hands, turning them palm up. Harry blushes and snatches her hands back, only for Louis to grab them again, “‘M just making sure your okay Bambi,” Louis mutters, tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth as she examines her hand. Harry bites her bottom lip, watching as Louis flip her hands every which way, and they immediately start to get clammy. And she quickly looks away embarrassed, when Louis looks up at her grinning, obviously having caught her staring. “You uh…look good, no injuries to be found. Although, it might sting for a while,”  
  
“Yeah yeah, of course.” Harry retracts her hands and wipes them on her back pockets. “So should we head on out?”  
  
Louis chuckles, “Yeah, we're going to be on the road a lot. Better get started now,”  
  
They move quickly, Louis locks up Scooby’s things and loads him into the back, where he promptly falls asleep on a pile of blankets. Harry gets in right after Louis and falls asleep as well, the slow humming of a familiar Stone’s song lulls her to sleep.

 

-

 

Louis exclaims, “Of fucking course, this shit would happen!” she walks over and starts kicking the wheel of the car. “Piece of fucking shit!”  
  
Harry looked on in amusement, walking Scooby around the area as Louis continued to kick the wheel of her car. They were in Oregon, in a town called Brandon, stuck on the side of the main road in front of some Mediterranean restaurant.  
  
The locals are staring at them as they walked by, amusement in their eyes as they watch Louis throw a tantrum. Some mother's hug their children closer as they pass by them, and young teenagers take videos and snapshot of Louis continuously kicking her car.  
  
So far everything had been going smoothly. At each stop, they make a decision to either stay for the night or eat and stay down at the beach until it’s time to go. They were supposed to stay in Brandon for a little before heading to Port Orford for the rest of the day. And after driving around for a gas station for three minutes on E in search for a gas station, the car finally shuts off.  
  
Harry looks down at Scooby as he looks up at her, she grins at him and scratches his head before going over to where Louis is sat. She walks over and sits down beside her on the sidewalk. Harry shrugs, “Could be worse,” her shoulders bumping into Louis'. “All we need is gas,”  
  
Louis looks over at her, an annoyed look on her face. “And how are we supposed to get gas from the gas station to the car?”  
  
Harry grins and points at the Family Dollar in front of them. She says, “They probably sell gas canisters.” Louis nods and looks down the street in silence. They sit there for a few more minutes. Louis seems to be in deep thought while Scooby is laying his head on Harry’s lap, eyes half closed. Harry blows out a breath and sucks on her bottom lip, looking down and picking at her fingernails. “So are we heading over there or what?”  
  
Louis nods after a beat, “Yeah, let’s go.” They get up and head across the street, the sun beating down on them as they enter the small Family Dollar. Harry notices that Scooby is painting from the heat and makes a mental note to buy a jug of water before they leave.  
  
They search around for a while before Louis spots it. Harry leaves Louis to grab it before heading over to where the jugs of water are, Scooby trailing behind her slowly. She grabs two before heading over to where Louis is, gas canister in hand, standing in the middle of where the snacks are.  
  
Harry bumps her shoulders and wiggles her eyebrows. “Wanna buy some snacks and head down to the beach, we can still make it to Port whatever. Plus, we were supposed to stop here anyway.” Louis nods. She doesn't fully acknowledge her. Harry watches her grab an abundance of snacks and putting them in a small basket. Harry follows suit and picks up sour gummy bears, two bags of salt and vinegar chips, and a jumbo honey bun. She puts them in the basket and walks over to the cooler and picks up two water bottles. Harry wonders around silently as she waits for Louis to finish, she walks into a random aisle and her eyes immediately are drawn to the cheap disposable cameras. Harry contemplates on buying one, she left her good camera back home in Richmond and she was irritated that she couldn’t capture parts of the trip.

“Hey Scooby,” Harry looks down at the pooch, scratching his head. She whispers to him “Should I get one or should I say fuck it and leave them right here while the guilt eats me alive for the rest of my young life?” Scooby huffs, looking away. “Great choice babes.” She grabs three and makes her way to the front counter to wait for Louis.  
  
The cashier beams at them as they get closer and closer to the counter. “Is that a golden retriever?” they ask.

Harry smiles at the person behind the counter, nodding at their question. “Uhh yeah,”  
  
They smile down at Scooby and wave, cooing at him. He doesn’t look remotely interested. “He’s such a beautiful dog! What’s his name?”  
  
Harry looks around for Louis before saying, “His name is Scooby.”  
  
“That’s so freaking cool,” they reply.  
  
Harry nods, thanking God when Louis finally emerges from one of the isles. She’s holding a small thing of bubbles in her hand, and random blue and green mock ray bans are perched on her nose. The cart is filled to the brim with snacks and weird toys. Harry stares in confusion, “What happened? Did you get sucked into another dimension?”  
  
Louis walks over and pats Scooby on the head, then randomly puts some heart shaped glasses on Harry’s face. “Let’s see how you look,” She says gripping Harry’s face, making her lips pucker. She moves her head from side to side and Harry just lets her. “You look fucking amazing.” She blushes which makes Harry blushes, butterflies stir in her stomach and into her chest. She manages to shrugs it off, trying not to make it show how nervous she is. Harry’s use to blushing around Louis all the time now anyway, especially from her compliments and oddly funny jokes, but she knows it’s nothing special. It _can’t_ be anything special. Louis starts setting down each item on the counter. Harry watches in amusement as Louis sits down each toy neatly.

The cashier looks at the toys, then looks at her. “You do know that most of those didn’t have a price tag on them so we can’t sell them to you?”  
  
Louis sulks, “Oh, so you can’t just take off like…” she looks down at them, “Five dollars for all of it?” The cashier shakes their head making Louis scowl at the counter as they ring up nine out of the fifteen small toys. When their done ringing up the rest of their things including the gas canister, which was the only thing they were supposed to be buying in the first place, and the stupid glasses, they wave goodbye and head outside back into the heat. They load the car, Harry gives Scooby a bowl full of water and leans against the car waiting for him to finish.  
  
Harry looks around and realizes something, “I’ve just realized, we don’t know where a gas station even is around here.”  
  
Louis slams the car door and walks over toward them, “We’ll just ask one of the locals or whatever,”  
  
Harry nods and takes Scooby’s bowl away when he’s finished, packing it away in the backseat. They walk towards a random woman sitting on a bench with a french poodle. She’s wearing an obnoxiously bright yellow sundress, and ray bans with a huge grin on her face as she pets her dog. They stand in front of her, and she looks up at them. “What can I do for ya?”  
  
“Umm, we were just wondering where the nearest gas station is?” Louis says.  
  
The lady points down the street towards the left, “Down there, about a half a mile until you reach Burberry street, turn left, and then on your right should be a gas station. Your welcome,”  
  
Harry beamed, “Thank you so so much!”  
  
They pet her dog for a second, wave goodbye, and start heading down the street. Louis swigs the gas canister back and forth, blowing out a big breath of air, growing with each step she takes. It’s silent for a while, the sounds of the ocean to their right and the bustling town to their left, going about their day the best they can in the heat. When they finally round the corner after walking for a few minutes, they see the gas station on the right. Louis looks over at her and groans, “After this, we're putting on our bathing suits and heading to the beach,” she wipes the sweat off her brow, “It’s too fucking hot, no more sitting in the car all day and shit.”  
  
Harry nods, agreeing, it’s too damn hot to stay in the car. She gives Louis the leash and walks inside to pay for the gas. She runs back over and fills the canister with gas, giving it to Louis and taking back Scooby as they head back.  
  
Louis huffs, “Remind me to never drive past a gas station if we’re close to E?”  
  
“Of course,” Harry replies.  
  
They finish walking back to the car with no other words said between them. Louis fills the car up with the gas and they get inside. Louis gets in and lets out a battle cry when it starts, hooping and hollering, making Harry laugh.  
  
“Okay…where are we going to put on our bathing suits?” Louis asks, pulling off from where the car sat when it first turned off. Harry shrugs and grabs one of the disposable cameras, snapping a picture of Louis, and then Scooby. When she goes to take another picture of her, Louis holds up her middle finger, a huge smile plastered on her face as she does so. “Why are you taking pictures of me? You know I can sue you for doing that without my permission.” Louis says matter-of-factly, lifting the wacky glasses she bought and waggles her eyebrows at Harry.  
  
Harry lifts her own plastic heart-shaped glasses and puts them in the console. “Doesn’t that look like a gym up there?” Harry points to a brick building with ‘BRANDON PUBLIC GYM’ on the front in big white letters.  
  
“Thank god for you, honestly. I don’t where I would have been if you weren’t here right beside me.” Louis says.

Harry blushes and looks down at her lap. They pull into the gym parking lot, leaving the windows down for Scooby. Harry pouts and reaches back to pet his head, “I’m sorry baby, can’t take you inside a gym. It’ll only take a few minutes, ten at the most.” Harry reaches back and kisses him on the head before grabbing her phone and getting out with Louis. “My bathing suit is in my suitcase.”  
  
“Mine too,” Louis replies.  
  
They get the bathing suits and head inside, bypassing all the toned men and women working out, and immediately find where the women’s locker room is. It’s surprisingly empty when they enter, Louis shoots Harry a look and smirks. Harry shrugs, “Weird that there’s in nobody here?” Louis nods, weird she thinks, and watches Louis head inside one of the stalls, closing it silently. Harry gives the room a once over before heading inside a stall herself. She holds up her bathing suit, it’s just a simple yellow two-piece with cheeky bottoms, she sighs, taking her bag off and she starts to change quickly. Afterward, she puts the rest of her clothing and tennis shoes in the bag except for her shorts. She takes out her neon green flip-flops and puts them on.

Harry walks out the same time as Louis, and when she makes her way towards a huge floor mirror, past a bunch of old rusted lockers. She twists and turns and tries to pull the bathing suit out of her ass. “Do you think these are a little too cheeky? Louis?” Harry turns around just as Louis rounds the corner and almost loses her breath when she looks at her in a black bikini. Her tan body has a thin layer of sweat from the heat, her bikini top hugs her breast perfectly, her thighs jiggle as she walks closer. Her hairy legs and arms are proudly on display, although it is barely noticeable because most of the hairs are blond if you look closely enough you can see it. Harry bites her lip, looking away fast, hating how predatory she felt after watching Louis like that. She clears her throat and looks back up at herself in the mirror, peering up at Louis slowly when she starts to talks.  
  
“Uhmm,” she stumbles over her words for a second, a light blush prevalent on her face and chest. “I think it’s okay, I mean it’s not a thong or anything like that so like…it’s appropriate for the beach and all…that.” Louis scratches the back of her neck, coughing into her hand, waving towards Harry. “I mean you look really fucking good, you have a great body.”  
  
“Thanks,” Harry nods, fiddling with her fingers, “You look great too, and you have a great body as well.”  
  
“Thank you,” They stand in silence for awhile, Harry biting her lip until it starts bleeding while fiddling with her fingers. Louis blows out a breath pointing towards the door, “Should we…head out?”  
  
Harry nods, “Yeah yeah—just gotta put on my shorts and we can go.”  
  
“Shit uhh yeah, me too.” They put on their shorts and head out. Harry practically all but runs to the car, almost forgetting that Scooby was inside.  
  
“Oh Scooby,” Harry says when Louis enters the car, “I hope me and your mom didn’t take too long buddy.” Harry buckles her seat built, feeling the car come to life as Louis starts the engine, pulling out of the parking lot and driving onto the road.  
  
“Should be a beach somewhere right? I don’t see an entrance anywhere.” Louis parks on the side of the road and takes her phone out.  
  
“Whaddya doing?”

“Google maps,” soon the navigations sets them on a fifteen-minute drive to Brandon Beach. The stores and restaurants soon turn into grass and trees, and the trees turn into just grass, More and more expensive houses start to pop up but sparsely. Harry rolls the window down all the way and snaps a picture. They arrive in silence, parking on the side of the road in front of three other cars. “Why did it take us to a cliff?” Louis asks looking around at their surroundings.

She looks around and points towards what looks like a path down to where the beach should be. “There are some stairs over there, think it’ll take us down to the beach,” Harry says, grabbing her bag. She empties it, putting her phone, the three cameras, and some of the snacks two water bottles.  
  
Louis nods her head signaling that she heard her. She grabs three beach towels from the back, sunscreen, and some of her junk food, motioning for Harry to put them in her bag. Harry complies, watching as Louis takes off the mock ray bans and settles for the authentic ones, Harry takes the heart-shaped glasses and puts them on.

“Ready to go, babe?” Louis asks, already out of the car. Harry gets out as well, slamming the door behind her, yawning and stretching her back. She scratches an itch on her thigh, before grabbing her bag and throwing it over her shoulders. 

Harry waits for Louis to put Scooby on his leash, and soon they start walking over towards the walkway down towards the beach. There are a lot of big rocks that sit stop the shore, and some all the way out into the ocean. It looks like a secluded beach from the way the cliff frames it. Not many people are out despite the heat, only a small family, and two couples. 

Harry stops, and in a hast, pulls out one of the cameras. She starts taking pictures of the beautiful blue ocean, the people playing down in the sand, the houses that line the top, and some apartments that face towards the beach. Surprisingly the water is calm, rows of waves crash against the shore and rocks.

Louis is already off the stairs and looking around to find a good spot to put their towels down. Harry takes her time going down, looking around with a smile. The sand is warm between her toes. 

“Over there,” Louis says, pointing towards some random direction and walking towards it. Harry quickly follows, tripping over herself when Louis starts to speed up her steps. When they reach the spot, the furthest away from the other people on the beach, Harry dumps their stuff down, her face scrunches up as she looks out towards the ocean, the glasses not really protected her eyes from the sun.

“I haven’t been to the beach in a while, I forget how much I love it here,” Harry says.

Louis grabs their towels and puts them down right next to each other, grabbing her snacks and throwing them on her towel. “I go down to the beach all the time, both in San Francisco and Encinitas.” Louis slowly takes off her shorts, making Harry’s mouth water. She looks away quickly, moving her hair from her face. Harry takes off her shorts and throws them and her flip-flops down next to her towel. When she looks back at Louis it takes a shit load of willpower to keep from drooling like a puppy. Louis is rubbing a thin coat of sunscreen onto her arms, tummy, and legs. Harry bites her lip, watching as Louis starts rubbing up against her leg toward her thighs, squeezing them and rubbing back and forth, making sure she’s covered. She doesn’t even notice when Louis starts calling her name, wiping the dribble of spit that formed on the side of her mouth.  
  
Harry swallows a thick load of saliva. “Y-yeah?”  
  
“Can you rub some on my back?” Louis holds out the sunscreen, and Harry takes it, almost dropping it because of sweaty hands.  
  
“Sure,” Harry drops down to her knees, squirting a generous amount onto her hands. She mentally panics because this will be the first time she’s actually touched Louis’ bare body, before this all they did was push each other, and bump shoulders. Her breathing speeds up as she rubs the sunscreen onto Louis' back, making sure she spreads it around evenly, happy that the glasses are blocking the panicked look in her eyes. When Harry’s done she quickly covers herself with sunscreen.  
  
“Want me to get your back?” Louis rubs sunscreen on her hands and sitting up so she’s on her knees, she raises her brow at her. Harry turns around and nods, not trusting herself to speak. Louis rubs it onto her back gently, massaging slowly, and Harry shutters from how cold it is. When she’s done Harry quickly grabs one of the camera's and heads towards the ocean, ignoring her calls.  
  
She lets out a breath she didn’t know that she was holding in. After calming her nerves, she looks out towards the Pacific. The clouds look like soft fluffy pillows wisping in the sky. The ocean foam tickles her legs, but her feet don’t stop moving as she goes in. The Pacific is cold and sky blue, almost the same shade of blue as the sky. It looks like a painting. Harry stops when it reaches her thighs, taking a few pictures of the scene around her. Louis running around with Scooby on the shore, where the sky and ocean meet, the many rocks that are sporadically placed in and outside of the ocean, the other people laughing and having a good time. It’s nice and peaceful, something that Harry’s been needing for a while. She always thought her heart belonged here, among the seagulls, the sand, the beach foam, the rocky cliffs and weird rock formations. This is where she always found her sense of belonging, it was like as if everything aligned, everything made since when she was on the beach.  
  
Harry closed her eyes and sighed, getting out of the water and heading back towards where the beach towels are. She turns towards where Louis and Scooby were playing around on the shore. Louis was running around with a big stick and Scooby chasing after her trying to snatch it away.  
  
Harry smiled slowly and took some pictures before putting the camera away. She dusted the sand off her legs and walked towards the beach again, this time not stopping until it reached just below her breast. The coldness of the ocean stole her breath away, but she carried on, wading in the water for a while, closing her eyes and letting the waves drift her further and further away from the shore. Harry opened them when she couldn’t feel the ground anymore, the talking and laughter back on the beach were drowned out by the sounds of the seagulls and ocean. She forced herself to swim back to shore, moving her hair from her face and letting it cascade down her back.

She hears Louis shout, “Harry! Harry! Wanna come play with us?” 

“Sure,”  
  
Harry heads towards them and they play around with Scooby, throwing the stick for him to fetch and just jumping around on the shore. It distracted her from the emotions swimming around in her chest. When they got tired, they all headed back to the beach towels and lay down.

Louis turns to Harry and says, “Was it nice being all the way out there?”

Harry nodded, “Yeah, it’s very peaceful. Just like,” Harry swallows the food in her mouth and takes a drink out of her water bottle, “Like letting the waves just carry you further away, hearing only the birds and the ocean sounds. It’s really nice.”

“You know,” Louis starts, “I don’t know a lot about you.”

Harry nods slowly, “Oh really?”

“Yeah, let’s play a game where I ask you questions and you answer.”

“What are we twelve?” Harry snorts.

“Hey! Twenty questions is an absolute classic!”

Harry rolls her eyes, “It’s a clique is what it is, but fine, ask away. What do you want to know about the wonderful Harry Styles?”

Louis touches her chin and rubs it for a second. Harry never understood the appeal of this game, but if Louis wanted to play she was going to play.

“What is your middle name?”

“Elizebeth.”

“What is your mom's name?”

“Anne Twist. Her maiden name was Cox’s with an x.”

Louis nods and shoves some chips in her mouth. She swallows it down before saying, “How many times have you been in love?”

Harry instantly blushes at the question. Technically she’s only really been in love with Ted, but come to find out it wasn’t a romantic kind of love. They had been friends in college and Harry had always seen him as just a friend and nothing more, she doesn’t remember when that changed. Harry hums, “I don’t think I have ever been truly in love with someone. I mean, yes I had crushes, but that’s about it?”

Louis nods again, “Your so lucky. Anyways let's do a rapid-fire round starting in three, two, one! What is your favorite movie of all time?” Harry tries to think for a second before Louis squawks at her like a bird, “You're supposed to answer these fast!”

Harry punches her shoulder, “That’s not a question I can answer fast! And my favorite movie is Love Actually.”

Louis scrunches up her nose, “Eh, not the best but whatever. If you could live anywhere, where would it be?”

“Fuck, I don’t know. These questions you can’t answer fast!” Harry laughs.

“Whatever, where is your favorite place in the whole world?”

“At home with my mom,”

“Cute.” Louis asks, “How do you spend your weekends?”

“Well, now I’m probably just going to…stay in bed all the time and eat junk food and watch movies all day.”

“My kind of weekend. And the last question because this was a disaster, who is your best friend?” Louis smirks and looks over at Scooby.

Harry rolls her eyes and decides to indulge her, “Of course it’s you, Louis, you are my bestest friend ever! You are so talented and beautiful and wonderful and every time you smile the whole world stops and stares for a while.”

Louis smiles brightly and bows, “Thank you, thank you. Oh, how you flatter me, even if you said a Bruno Mars line it was still amazing.”

Harry shakes her head, “Your such a dork, Louis Tomlinson.”

Louis nods and wiped her mouth off, “Random, but when we get to Encinitas I’m gonna teach you how to surfboard.”

Harry smirks and munches on some of Louis' sour patch kids, “Oh really?”

“Yup, can’t wait to watch you fall every time you try and stand up.” Louis reaches over and pets Scooby’s head, kissing the top of it. The sun is starting to set, the sky turning a beautiful pink color. The clouds look like cotton candy. The sun almost setting over the ocean, going down like a blazing fire. Harry quickly grabs one of the cameras and snaps a few shots of the ocean. “Take some of us, Harold. Gotta get my portfolio together for when I become an international supermodel.”

Harry giggles, taking shots of both Louis and Scooby. Louis has a pretty smile on her face, her eyes crinkle and her body glowing. She’s leaning back with her hands scrunched in the sand, and her head turned towards Harry.

“Beautiful,” Harry murmurs quietly.

Louis grins, “What did you say?”  
  
Harry shakes her head slowly, “Nothing at all Louis, nothing at all.”  
  
Louis gives her a look, “Okay,” she looks away and grabs Scooby’s leash, “we should pack up, the sun is setting and it’s almost dark.” Harry nods and they pack everything up, putting Scooby on a leash, throwing away their trash, and heading towards the car. Once everything is packed up, they feed Scooby and take him for a quick walk. When they get back into the car Louis stalls, “Should we get out of these wet clothes now, or wait until we get to a hotel and can take a shower?”  
  
Harry thinks for a second before saying, “The latter. I really want to take a long hot shower, get all of this damn itchy sand off, and then get in bed.”  
  
Louis nods, “Okay my navigation says it should take us about thirty minutes to get to Port Orford.”

Harry continues staring out of the window. The rest of the drive is relatively silent, the radio plays softly in the background, Louis humming, and Scooby’s soft snores. It makes Harry feel better about the scene the beach. They soon pass a bright white ‘WELCOME TO PORT ORFORD’ sign. It looks like a quaint little beach town with a lot of tall trees. Louis turns down a random road, past all of the shops, mom and pop stores, and small family restaurants. A flurry of tree’s pass by the window for a while. The only sign of civilization is the homes placed sporadically around the wooded area. Soon they pulled into the parking lot, ‘SEA CREST MOTEL’ lights up the dark sky in bright neon red lights.  
  
They file out of the car silently, still not saying anything to each other. Harry grabs her bag, and suitcase out of the trunk, waiting for Louis to join her side, and soon all three head inside. Scooby struggles to keep up with him as he was just woken up from his nap, making Harry coo at him. They enter the lobby and are immediately greeted by a red headed woman with wide rimmed glasses perched atop her narrow nose. Her red lipstick is overdrawn and smeared on the sides, but she has a dazzling smile on her face like she could care less. She reminds Harry of her Aunt Selma.  
  
Louis saunters over and sets down her stuff, plastering on a huge smile. “I was wondering if you had a room with two beds available?”  
  
The lady nods and types into the computer, she fidgets around for a second before smiling up at them, “Yes we do. What is your name, and how long will your stay be sweetheart?”  
  
“Uhh, Louis Tomlinson, and just for the night. We should be gone by noon,”  
  
The old lady smiles and types something into the computer. She reaches down and produces a key with 289 engraved in it, she hands it to Louis. “Your total is $108, enjoy you stay girls.”  
  
“Thank you,” Louis Pays before grabbing her things. They head towards the elevator and get on when it opens up. They go up in silence. Harry looks at Louis and smiles at her, Louis returns the gesture. They get off when the elevator dings and make their way to the room. When they get inside Harry immediately sets down her things on the bed and runs into the bathroom. She strips off her bathing suit and pisses before turning on the shower. Letting out a sigh of relief, Harry lathers her body and hair. She washes up for a little while longer, getting all the knots and tangles out of her hair. Not wanting to take up all of the hot water, she gets out and wraps a towel around her body and wrings out her hair. She sticks her tongue out at Louis when she enters the room.  
  
“Hopefully there’s some hot water left.” Harry jokes.

“If there’s no more hot water left, I’m going to beat your tiny little ass!” Louis yells. She leaves the room with her things, leaving Harry all alone with Scooby whose snoring in the corner of the room.Harry sighs and starts to get ready for bed, lathering on some lotion and putting on a pair of pink panties, grey shorts, and a black oversized tee shirt. She stares out of the window, standing and watching the waves crash against the rocks, a storm brewing over the ocean. It startles her slightly when Louis comes over and stands next to her, wearing a random band tee and grey sweatpants, her hair dripping onto her face. 

“You okay?” Louis asks, grabbing a hold of her hand and rocks it back and forth.

Harry nods and whispers, “Yeah,” She feels the towel unwrap from her hair, she lets it fall to the ground, her hair wetting the back of her shirt. Harry smiles at Louis and lays her head on her shoulder. They stare out at the ocean for what seems like an eternity. If she could stay like that forever, she would in a heartbeat. But Louis shrugs her off, saying a quick sorry. “I would love to stay like this but I’m really tired.” Louis gives her a sheepish look and walks over towards her bed and gets under the covers. Harry continues staring for a while before she gets in her bed as well.  
  
Harry stares up at the ceiling, her vision blurring. She takes a deep breath, looking over at Louis whose fast asleep.“Good night Louis,” she whispers.

“G’night Harry,”

 

-

 

Harry is bored out of goddamn her mind. 

They’ve been on the road for what feels like hours, driving to a place in California called Eureka. Right now they’re stuck in traffic because of construction.  
  
“Louis,” Harry says, unbuckling her seat belt and leaning against the glove compartment. She opens her bag and grabs some gummy bears out, munching on a few before looking over to where Louis is playing on her phone. “Louehh,”  
  
Louis sighs and looks at Harry. A frown etched on her face as she mutters, “What?”  
  
Harry takes a deep breath and sticks her tongue out, Louis glares at her and looks back down at her phone. Harry sighs loudly again, putting the gummy bears back and leaning her head against the dashboard. A car honks behind them, startling Harry and making her heart race. “Holy shit that scared me.”  
  
Louis glares and shoves her hand out the window, holding up a middle finger. “No one's even fucking moving and honking won’t make it better!” she shouts out the window. Harry giggles and starts playing around with the bubbles, blowing them all around the car. She blows some in Louis' face and Louis snatches the bubbles away and pours them out of the window and throwing the container in the console.  
  
“What the—what was that for?” Harry snatched the container, throwing it at Louis.

“To stop you from blowing bubbles in my face,”

Harry rolls her eyes and crosses her arms, “Well I’m bored and you won’t talk to me.”  
  
“We’re stuck in traffic, and there’s nothing to do.”  
  
Harry groans and smacks her head against the console. “Louehh,”  
  
“Harry,”  
  
Harry pouts and grabs Louis' hand, tracing the lines and making Louis shutter. “What are you doing?”  
  
Harry looks up briefly at Louis and smiles, Louis puts her phone down and pokes her cheek.

“I’m trying to tell your fortune.” she gives her an amusing look, “Why did you do that?”

“I never notice that you had dimples before. It’s cute,”  
  
Harry blushes, “Anyway, your fortune says that you will…holy shit.” Harry looks up slowly, staring Louis in the eyes trying to scare her.  
  
Louis groans, waving her free hand in the air. “Oh no, what does it say?”  
  
Harry lets go of Louis' hand, “I don’t know if you want to know,”  
  
Louis grabs her shoulders and shakes her, “Please, you have to tell me!”  
  
Harry looks away, wiping a fake tear away. “Well, if you must know. It says you will have intense diarrhea-”  
  
“No!”  
  
“For the rest of your life.” Harry snickers, trying to stay in character, “I’m so sorry you had to find out like this.”  
  
Louis burst out laughing, “We are so fucking stupid.”  
  
Harry laugh along as well, tears forming in her eyes. “I’m still fucking bored!”  
  
“Than turn on the radio and listen to some music, go out onto the road and dance your ass off,” Louis says, picking up her phone and continuing to play her game. The sounds of Candy Crush fill the car and it makes Harry’s head hurt. She turns around so she’s facing the dashboard. Sighing, she reaches over and turns on the radio, some indie band playing. “I know you like indie music but really?”  
  
Harry sticks her tongue out, “Indie music is beautiful. The Lumineers are a really cool band,” she grabs her phone and scrolls through some apps.  
  
“Why don’t you look through my vintage cd’s in the glove compartment,” Louis says.

Harry groans, but reaches forward anyways and pulls out a stack of CDs. Most were mixed tapes with generic titles. The others were from bands that Harry recognize when she was younger. Green Day, Blink-182, Linkin Park, and Coldplay. “Never knew you like pop punk music,” Harry muttered, putting in a random Green Day album.

Louis shrugged and laughed when one of their songs started to filter through the speakers. “God, I haven’t listened to them in so damn long. I was obsessed with them back in high school, even started a band with three other girls and learned the chords to almost all of their songs.”

“You were such a dedicated fan.”

“I still am, Styles.” Louis smiles, the corners of her eyes crinkle. “Gonna have to get you hip to them all one day.”

Harry continued to look through the rest of the taps and landed on a mixtape titled ‘Forever yours and more, Em’. Harry clicked her tongue and held the tap up, “Who is ‘Em’?”

Louis quickly looked over and snatched the CD away from Harry throwing it to the back seat. “Nothing to worry your pretty little head about.”

Harry continued to press on, determined to know who ‘Em’ was. “Was she a friend or something?” she asks, placing the rest of the cd’s back inside the glove compartment.

Louis sighs, “She was something like that.” she turns up the radio, the sound of Green Day feeling out the car and filling into every space. Louis mouths the lyrics and bangs her fingers against the steering wheel. Harry knows that’s cue to not continue to press the situation

Suddenly the car lurches forward, Harry almost falls out of the seat. “What th-”  
  
“The cars are moving!” Louis exclaims. The cars do indeed start moving, speeding up as more time goes along. Soon there is no more traffic and as soon as Harry expresses this thought the cars start slowing down. Louis groans, “No! Please move!”  
  
Harry groans, “This is so fucking ridiculous.”

Louis looks sadly out of the window, “Why is life always fucking me over?”

Harry chuckles, “I hope we move soon because we might run out of gas.”  
  
Louis frowns, scowling at Harry, “I thought I specifically told you not to let me pass a gas station.”  
  
“We’re okay right now, but if we stay longer, we might run out of gas,” Harry explains.

“Everything sucks,”  
  
Harry looks over at Louis and gets the sudden urge to touch her hair. So she does.

Louis pulls back from her touch, “What are you doing, Harry?”

Harry leans forward and carts her fingers through Louis' hair, scratching her scalp and making the young girl shiver. “Why did you cut your hair? I really like it though.”  
  
Louis sighs, leaning into her touch. “I just wanted to.” Louis shrugs, “One day I just felt like it. Not going to lie it was after coming to terms with being a lesbian. I think I was like…sixteen years old.”  
  
Harry hums and continues to scratch Louis' scalp, messing up her fringe. They stay like that for some time until traffic starts to pick up and Harry has to wake Louis up from her cat nap.  
  
Harry turns in her seat and pretends to fall asleep, a smile on her face.

 

-

 

When they finally get to Eureka, they stop at a bed and breakfast and check-in. It starts raining when they get to the room, the pitter patter of rain bouncing off the roof and thunder rolling in bounces off the walls. The weather changing making Harry feel a little down. When it lets up they walk Scooby around the area, feed him, and sleep for the rest of the day. In the morning, they get breakfast and laze around taking short naps and watching TV, the rain getting worse as the day goes on. It’s nice for a while, Harry laying her head on Louis' lap, Louis plays in Harry’s hair making the younger girl fall asleep multiple times throughout the day. They stay like that for a while, only getting up to use the bathroom.  
  
Louis scratches Harry’s scalp, stopping abruptly. “Wanna go to the beach?”  
  
Harry rubs the sleep out of her eyes and yawns. “I don’t know.” Harry shrugs, “Hasn’t it been rainin’ all day?”  
  
“Yeah, but it stopped, you can take cool pictures and I can take Scooby for a little walk. Afterward, I want to check out this diner. It looks really cool and retro.”  
  
Harry nods, “M’kay, let’s go.”  
  
They get up, taking their time as they get ready. Harry throws her hair up into a messy bun, before searching through her suitcase and putting on leggings and a white shirt. She slings her bag over her shoulders and waits for Louis to get ready.  
  
Louis puts Scooby on his leash and walks over towards the door, “Let’s go, Curly.”  
  
Harry grabs the room and car keys, shutting the door quietly behind them. They leave with a wave to the owners. It’s humid when they get outside, the wind blowing hot air instead of the cool breeze she's used to in Washington. The humidity makes Harry feel sluggish as she hands the keys off to Louis. They only stay at the beach for a little while, Harry takes pictures and Louis walks Scooby up and down the coast. They leave when it starts drizzling, heading to the diner. Louis’ excitement amuses Harry.  
  
“When we drove past it I was like, ‘Woah holy shit!’ It looked so cool inside, and I wanted to go in before we leave!” Louis exclaims.  
  
Harry chuckles snorts, “Well I hope the food is good.”  
  
“Who cares,” Louis shrugs, “the atmosphere alone is what sells the food.”  
  
Harry looks at her confused look, “What?”  
  
“What I mean is that if the atmosphere of the place is welcoming and whatever, then the taste of the food doesn't matter.”  
  
“Sure…” Harry trails off. They pull into the parking lot of a small swanky looking diner. It looked like it was straight out of the fifties’, the outside was covered in red and purple neon lights strips, the path had black and white check boards that lead into the restaurant. There were only three other cars parked, but the few people inside looked like they were having a good time talking and laughing.

“Wow,” Harry says, “It looks fucking amazing.”

Louis looked at Harry with excitement in her eyes, “I know right!”  
  
Harry nods, thoroughly impressed with the way it looked. They grabbed Scooby and walked inside, and the decorations just got better. The same checkerboard patterns are inside, red neon light stripes line the ceiling parameter. Booths were lined up in rows, and three jukeboxes were playing an old song that Harry couldn’t recognize. They quickly get a booth the farthest away from the older people sitting at the counter and wait for someone to come over and take their order.  
  
“This place is so fucking cool,” Louis says, looking around in awe.  
  
Harry nods, “Really? I didn’t peg you for a girl that liked fifties’ decor and whatnot.”

“I’m not into fifties’ decor, I just think it looks cool-”

Louis gets cut off with the waitress comes by with a flip book in hand. She smiles down at them brightly, saying, “Welcome girls to Mel’s diner! I’m Sally and I will be your waiter today, can I start Y'all off with something to drink?”

“Sprite,” Harry says.  
  
“I’ll have the same,” Louis says.  
  
She writes down there order and looks up at them with the same bright smile, “I’ll bring that right over. Wave me over when you're done looking over the menu.” Sally winks at Louis and saunters away in her retro diner outfit.  
  
Louis leans back in her seat, a giddy smile on her face. “I am in _heaven_.”  
  
Harry laughs and looks over the menu, deciding a double burger with curly fries. An unfamiliar feeling steers in her stomach when she thinks back to the waiter winking at Louis and Louis loving it. _It’s just weird_ , Harry thinks. She looks back at the waiter, frowns, and then focuses her attention on the menu, suppressing the feeling and keeping her thoughts on what to order.  
  
Louis sits down her menu, “I’m going to get ‘The Perfect Burger’,”  
  
Sally walks over with their drinks and she puts them down gently, bringing out a notepad and pen from a pocket in her apron. “Okay,” she murmurs, “Are you all ready to order.”  
  
Louis nods and motions for Harry to go first. She orders a double burger with curly fries, and Louis orders her food. Sally writes it all down and walks away leaving them alone.  
  
Harry takes a sip of her Sprite, smiling a Louis, “S’really cool here,”  
  
Louis smiles back, her eyes crinkling as she looks at Harry before looking around at their surroundings. “It really is, I really love the retro _feel_ of it.”  
  
Harry nods, “It really looks like somethin’ out of the fifties’.”  
  
A slower more song that Harry can’t recognize starts playing on the jukebox closes to them. Harry starts moving her head along to the music as she looks around.  
  
“My mom really loves this song.”  
  
Harry looks over at Louis and smiles, “What is it called?”  
  
“When A Man Loves A Woman. She use to put it on a lot when I was a little girl, we’d use to dance together to it.”  
  
Harry nods and takes another sip of her Sprite, “That’s really sweet Lou,”  
  
It’s quiet for a moment, Louis looks conflicted, opening and closing her mouth a few times. She says after a beat, “Wanna…dance?”  
  
It surprises Harry for a moment, she almost chokes on her Sprite. She frowns asking, “Why?”  
  
Louis shrugs, “Why not?”  
  
Harry nods, asking, “You mean like…slow dancing?”  
  
Not answering her questions, Louis stands up and holds her hand out for Harry to take, she so does hesitantly. She gets out of the booth slowly, and Louis leads her over to where the jukebox is playing. Behind a pillar where no one can see them. Louis wraps her arms around her waist, and Harry wraps her arms around her shoulders. Harry feels weird for a solid second before leaning her head against Louis' shoulder, bending down a little bit. They sway in-tune to the music, a smile creeps its way onto Harry’s face. She breathes in and out slowly. The world around them doesn’t disappear like the movies, but it’s almost close to it when Harry closes her eyes. She forgets about everything and only focuses on trying not to step on Louis' feet. Harry turns her head into Louis' neck, breathing softly out of her mouth, making Louis shiver and tighten her hold on her waist. Harry moves her head off of Louis' shoulders and stares. It’s silent as they stare at each other. The lights feel dimmer, but Louis' pretty ocean blue's still shone. She looks down at Louis' lips, quickly looking back up at her eyes. Harry involuntary licks her lips, breathing harshly out of her mouth. Her breathing starts speeding up when Louis starts leaning in, making Harry do the same. _Do it_ , she convinces herself, _where’s the harm in kissing a pretty girl_?

A loud banging causes them to separate. They turn and look over at where Sally is placing their food down on the table, picking up the big serving tray off the floor.

Harry looks over at Louis and blushes, smiling down at her shoes. “Um, I guess we should go eat?”  
  
Louis chuckles nervously, blushing as she takes her hand through her hair, shaking it out slightly and slicking it back. “Yeah, let’s go.”  
  
Harry leads the way, and they don’t talk to each other for almost the remainder of their time there, only sharing small glances and smiles at each other. Harry stares down at her food, taking small bites out of her fries and finish the burger. She frowns and peers up at Louis briefly before looking back down at her food. She has never been more confused in her life, she never thought she was into woman but Louis is really making her contemplate if she just suppresses her feelings for the opposite sex this whole time. _Maybe that’s why I couldn’t marry Ted_ , she thinks solemnly. Harry bites her lip and pushes her plate away, suddenly not feeling hungry anymore.  
  
“You okay?” Louis ask.  
  
Harry nods, “Yeah, I’m just full.”  
  
“Me too,” Louis quickly adds. She calls Sally over and pays for the check quickly, leaving a nice tip. They run out to the car to try and not to get soaking wet from the pouring rain. Harry laughs as Louis fumbles with the car keys.

“Fuck!” she yells. Louis bends down and picks them up, finally putting the keys inside and entering the car, unlocking the door for Harry. 

Harry gets inside, still laughing as Scooby shivers in her lap. She pulls her hair out of the bun and lets it fall onto her shoulders, the ringlets sticking to her face. Harry breathes deeply and moves Scooby to the back, still shaking with laughter.

She looks over at Louis and smiles. Louis stares at her for a second before leaning over and kissing her on the lips slowly. Harry immediately kisses back, sighing into the kiss and closes her eyes, grabbing onto Louis' face. Louis' lips are chapped, but they’re still soft and taste like the cheap strawberry lip gloss she puts on from time to time. Butterflies fill Harry’s stomach, making her feel warm and mushy inside. Her brain goes haywire with intrusive thoughts of _Louis Louis Louis_ , and _I can’t believe her lips are this soft_! She thinks about Louis' smile, her eyes and the way they crinkle when she smiles, her body against hers as they slow danced, her soft thin chapped lips pushing against her slowly.

It feels as though Harry’s whole world has been turned all askew. Like all the planets and stars aligned, all working together. But Harry knows that it isn’t going to last, that just as quickly as the planets and stars align, they soon get sucked into a black hole. A black hole that consumes everything in its path, not caring about what it destroys or how much. Louis scoots back in her seat, the black hole. Harry’s heart drops, the atmosphere in the car completely changes, the stars and the planets. Harry’s afraid to say something, but she sucks it up and tries to ask what’s wrong. “Did-”

“I am so sorry,” Louis rushes out like she’s been holding it in all that time. Harry watches behind cloudy eyes as Louis leans against the steering wheel with her hands in her head clenching tightly onto her hair. She releases her hold and turns to face the window.  
  
Harry frowns, “I-” she doesn’t know what to say, she tries and reaches out to touch her but Louis flinches, “It’s-It’s okay. I was-”

“No, no it’s not! It was a mistake I didn’t mean to… I-It was stupid of me to do that.”  
  
Harry’s frown deepens as she takes in Louis' words. Time stops a little bit, a lump forms in her throat and she suddenly feels small and insignificant sitting in the passenger seat. Harry leans back and blows out a breath, wrapping her arms around her body to warm herself up from the cold she just knows the feeling. Scooby’s in the back sleeping underneath a mound of multicolored blankets. Oblivious to what’s happening just inches away from him. It’s silent for a while, Scooby’s deep snores and the rain falling onto the car violently makes it a lot less awkward. It makes Harry wipe away the few tears that gather and fall, her nose twitched as she sniffles. She clears her throat after a few minutes have passed, making sure her voice doesn’t shake, her lip wobbles as she furiously.

“We should head back.” She bites her bottom lip harshly, drawing blood. 

Louis doesn’t say anything, she moves robotically, starting the car, backing out of the parking lot and driving back down the road to the bed and breakfast.

When they get there Harry grabs the room keys, slamming the car door behind her, rushing inside and making it to the room. She opens the door and slams it shut behind her, grabbing her suitcase and heading into the bathroom. Harry locks the door behind her and sits on the toilet seat crying. Her shoulders shake violently, snot running down and over her mouth. She tries hard to keep it in but it comes out like waves crashing fiercely against the rocks, like a powerful storm after a particularly hot summer day.

After calming herself down, Harry hears a little ding from her phone. She expects it to be Gemma or her mother, but when Harry picks it up and see that it’s from Ted, the last person she’d expect to be hearing from right now. She almost falls off the toilet seat.

She opens it slowly, it reads:  
  
**From Ted:** _We need to talk. Call me asap.  
_  
Harry stares at it for a while, everything seems to stop for a minute, even the rain outside stops for a brief, calming down for a moment before picking up again. Her finger hovers over the call bottom before she eventually presses it. It rings for a few a while, Harry almost hangs it up but a gruff hello stops her from doing so.  
  
She takes a few deep breaths before saying, “Hi, it’s me. Harry. You said you wanted to talk?”  
  
“Yeah, I just…” there’s a bit of shuffling over the line before he murmurs. “I wanted to see how you were doing and wanted to know if you wanted to meet in person?”  
  
Harry tugs on one of her stray curls and twirls it around her finger, “I’m…okay. I-I would love to meet in person. How uhhh…h-how are you doing?”  
  
“Fine, look-” Harry closes her eyes and sucks it in a big breath. “Can we meet any time this week at my parents in Elk?”  
  
Harry wipes the snot that has gathered, “Yeah, I’ll try and text you the time when I’ll be there.”  
  
“Good, I have to go but text me and I’ll get back to you soon. Bye,”  
  
“Ted,” she whispers into the phone, his name feels foreign and strange on her tongue. A lump in her throat starting to hurt more and more as she struggles to say something.  
  
He sighs, “What Harry?”  
  
She pauses for a second, “I’m really _really_ sorry,”  
  
It’s quiet on the receiving end, Harry lets her phone fall out of her hand and onto the ground as soon as she hears the dial tone. She combs her hands through her tangled hair tugging until it hurts. She kissed girl thirty minutes ago and really fucking liked it (no pun intended) and she just agreed to meet with her ex-finance to talk about god knows what.  
  
She looks around at her surroundings and suddenly stands up from her seat on the toilet. “Holy shit,” she breathes out. Harry takes a moment to calm herself down and not talk herself out of going, weeding out the pros and cons. She clears her head for a second and takes a quick shower and puts on some random pj’s. She drags it out back into the room.  
  
Scooby’s in the corner eating his food, and Louis is facing her bed, her back facing Harry. When she does turn around Harry looks away fairly quickly. It's awkward as they look at anything but each other, dancing around each other like ballerinas.

Louis opens and closes her mouth a few times but says nothing. She walks over and starts opening her suitcase in front of the dresser, she pauses and looks up,“Harry I-”

“If we're going to talk about what happened in the car, we don’t need to. I get it. It was a mistake. It was stupid and we shouldn't have done that,” Harry wanted it to hurt when she said it, wanted to hurt Louis with every single syllable. She now knows that it hurt herself to say it more than it was intended to hurt Louis.  
  
“I-” Louis starts.  
  
“What?”  
  
Louis turns her head, her cheeks are bright pink, and her hair is matted to her forehead from the rain. Fuck her for looking so damn cute right now. “Just let me finish okay?” Louis says, “What happened in the car, I-I didn’t mean to force myself on you.”  
  
Harry shakes her head, “God Louis, you didn’t _force_ yourself onto me.I didn’t--I didn’t _hate_ it.”  
  
Louis' head shoots up, her eyes are glazed over and her lips are swollen from her constantly biting them. She looks her up and down, “What? So…your saying that you liked it?”  
  
Harry starts biting her lip, picking at the peeling skin there. She shrugged her shoulders, “I mean…I’m not like-”  
  
“A _lesbian_?”  
  
“Louis,” she whispers.

“You don’t have to worry about that, you’ve said so many times.”

The way Louis says it makes Harry want to fucking _cry_. Harry knows that she’s not, _or maybe she is who knows at this point_ , and it’s not like she grew up in a homophobic family. She grew up in a loving home with a great mother and a great sister, and later the perfect step-dad. She was privileged in that fact that if she were gay or bi or whatever, that they would have accepted her with open arms. 

She lets out a shaky breath, “I-I,”

“You know,” Louis sets her things down on Harry’s bed and sits down at the foot. Her fringe sticks to her forehead from the downpour outside. “It would be perfectly fine if you were. A lesbian, I mean, it would be perfectly fine if you were. I’m…a lesbian .”  
  
Harry releases the tight hold on her bottom lip from between her teeth, she nods, peering up at Louis from glassy eyes. “I know that it’s fine, I mean I don’t know if I’m a lesbian or not. But I know it’s okay,”  
  
“Good. I don’t want to push you into anything.”  
  
“You _aren’t_ , I promise. I told you that I didn’t dislike kissing you. If it’s any constellation you have awesome soft lips.” After the last sentence leaves Harry’s mouth she grimaces, “That sounded so fucking creepy,”  
  
Louis chuckles, “It was cute, and you have awesome soft lips too, to be honest.”  
  
Harry sucked on her bottom lip, trying hard to hide a smile.  
  
Louis stands up with her things in her hand, she walks over towards the bathroom and before entering she turns to Harry and says, “Let’s save the really deep and soul-crushing conversions for much much later in the future when we're old and can’t hear. No more fighting. Whatever happens, happens.”

Harry closed her eyes for a moment and sighs, “I agree. Carpe diem.” 

“Seize the day,” Louis says.

“Put very little trust in tomorrow.” Harry finishes off.

Louis goes back over to where her suitcase is and riffles through it, while Harry stares at the blank tv screen. She quickly remembers setting up the meeting with Ted and dreads telling Louis about it, “Sooo…I kinda need a big favor from you.”

“Okay?”  
  
Harry twiddles with her fingers awkwardly, “I need you to drive me to Elk so I can talk to my ex-fiance,”  
  
Louis nods slowly, “Sure, I have to pick up a dog there anyway so that’s perfect actually.”  
  
She looks at Louis confused, “Whoa whoa whoa, what are you talking about?”  
  
Louis ignores Harry for a moment and pulls out some sweats, “I bought another dog from an owner on Craigslist, and they live in Elk in one of those big ass houses. It’s a beagle.”  
  
“Why did you buy a dog on Craigslist?”  
  
Louis shrugs, “Well, I saw the picture one faithful drunk night, got on Craigslist and saw a couple selling a dog. I looked at the photos of him and I wanted him ever since, so I chatted with the owner and I’m buying him.”  
  
“What’s the owner's name?”

“Veronica and Maxson Handler? I don’t really remember.”

“Oh thank god!” Harry holds her hand over her heart and blows out a big breath.  
  
Louis gives her a look and walks over to the bathroom, “Why?”  
  
“There aren’t a lot of people who like live there, so I thought you were going to buy a dog from my ex-fiance's parents.”  
  
Louis smiles, “Well thank the heavens that I’m not, that would have been really fucking awkward. Anywho, we can head there in the morning, it shouldn’t take long at all. I’m gonna go take a shower.” She shuts the door behind her, and after a few seconds, Harry hears the shower come one. Sighing, she turns off all but one of the lamps and gets under the blankets. After a few minutes, Harry hears some shuffling around the room and see’s Scooby making his way over to her bed. He jumps up, shakes off his fur, and plops down right next to her, his head laying down on her thigh as he looks at her with tired eyes. Harry scratches his head and behind his ears, chuckling when his tail wags a little bit. Everything is nice and cozy, the sound of the rain making Harry even more sleepy than she originally was, and soon her eyelids start to get heavy and she dozes off right when Louis' entered the room. She dreams of eye crinkles, soft thin lips, and the bluest of eyes that rival the ocean.

 

-

 

When Harry wakes up from the sweet sounds of Scooby snoring right by her left ear, she doesn’t expect to wake up to the smell of coffee and breakfast. She rubs the sleep out of her eyes and stands up slowly, eyes still closed as she stretches her back.  
  
“Wakey wakey eggs and bake-y!” Louis says in a cheery voice, “It’s twelve o’clock and I just text the dog owner that we’d be there by two so get a move on lady!” Louis finishes with the clap of her hands making Harry wince.. Still, sleepy Harry walks over to where a smile table was placed in the corner of the room and digs in. “I got you eggs, bacon, and toast with an orange juice, and a coffee from their coffee maker,” Louis explains, even though Harry wasn't really paying attention at all.

Harry takes her time eating her food. After she’s done, she takes her suitcase into the bathroom and starts getting ready. She brushes her teeth and washes her face before letting down her hair. She puts on a little bit of makeup with a bright red lip, and lastly, she shuffles through her suitcase to find something clean to wear. It takes her a while but she settles on some random high waisted shorts with a little sand on the ass cheeks, and a random band hoodie she doesn’t recognize. Harry stares at herself in the mirror and signs, she tries to fix the smudge of her red lipstick and ends up making it worse, it smears all over and around her lips making her look like a clown. Frustrated, she throws the tube of lipstick and the rag to the ground. 

“Are you okay?” The door opens slowly as Louis enters, Harry shrugs and sits down on the toilet. “You look like a sad clown, what happened?”  
  
“I noticed that my lipstick smeared, and I was trying to fix it, but I forgot the rag was wet and it started to smear everywhere and everything sucks,” Harry explains.

Louis walks over and grabs the rag from Harry’s hands, she rings it out and begins to wipe off all of her makeup. She’s delicate as she does so, softly holding Harry’s head in place with one hand as the other scrubs the makeup off. Harry firmly plants her hands on her knees and closes her eyes.  
  
“No need to fret. Why are you wearing a face full of makeup anyway?”  
  
“I just wanted to look presentable today going to Ted’s.”  
  
Louis frowns, tilting Harry’s head back to wipe under her chin, “Fuck Ted, you don’t need to impress him. Show up with no makeup on, and if he talks shit I’ll deck him in the shin.”  
  
Harry snorts, “Thank you,”  
  
“No problem buttercup.” Louis wipes the last of it off and smiles at her, pulling Harry off of the toilet seat, not letting go of her hands. “Let’s get going okay? I wanna get there early so we can spend the rest of our day enjoying ourselves at the beach playing with the new dog.”  
  
Harry nods and packs up her things. They walk out of the bathroom and start headed out, saying goodbyes and thank-yous to the owners. They pack up the car and head off to Elk, Harry shooting a text to Ted that she’ll be there soon.

 

-

 

Halfway there Harry starts to panic.  
  
There aren’t many people that live here, mostly the rich living on huge acres of land in big intimidating homes looking over the ocean. Harry has only been here a handful of times, seven times to be exact. Her legs start shaking, she tries to calm herself down but nothing is working. She closes her eyes, taking a few deep breaths, and trying not to panic. It startles her a bit when Louis puts a hand on her thigh.  
  
“Everything is going to be okay. I’m going to be there with you,” Louis tries to reassure, squeezing Harry’s thigh in her soft palm. Knowing Louis will be there does calm her down, but it still doesn’t ease her nervousness.  
  
“I’m still so scared,” she whispers, “what if he starts like…I dunno verbally attacking me?”  
  
“I won’t let him verbally attack you. I promise,”  
  
Harry nods, staying silent the entire way to Ted’s house, only talking to give directions to Louis. When they pull up in front of the house, it’s eerily quiet. The modern two-story brick home, from what Harry can remember, sits on five acres of land that overlooks the ocean. The foliage that surrounds the house makes it look like it’s surrounded by a forest. There are already three cars parked in the long driveway, one Harry immediately recognizes as Ted’s.  
  
“Fuck he’s here, Lou.”  
  
“It’s going to be okay,” Louis says.  
  
They park right next to the line of cars and get out as slowly as possible. Louis grabs Scooby and they start walking towards the front door. When they get there Louis grabs Harry’s hand and gives it a squeeze. She knocks on the door harshly, giving Harry a goofy look and says, “Captain Crunch’s full name is Horatio Magellan Crunch.”  
  
The door opens just as Harry softly says what. Ted stands there in all of his hipster glory. Thick rimmed glasses, red plaid shirt, black skinny jeans, and brown Chelsea boots. He looks like he belongs behind a Starbucks counter. Harry plans on telling Louis that when they are long gone from this place.  
  
Harry waves with her free hand, “Hi,”  
  
He waves back, “Hello, and who is this?”  
  
Louis lets go of her hand and hold it out towards Ted, Harry watches as they shake hands.“I’m Louis. Louis Tomlinson,” Louis points at Scooby, “And this is the ever wonderful Scooby Tomlinson.”  
  
Ted nods and motions towards the door. “Okay, let's head inside and have a little chat.”  
  
They walk through the foyer and into the spacious living room. They sit on one of the three couches, Louis right next to her and Ted setting to the couch on their right. It’s silent. Harry looks around the room, finding it just the same from when she was here last time. Tall floor to ceiling windows lines one wall that leads out onto a terrace that overlooks the frothing blue ocean. White billowy curtains move with the wind as a breeze rolls by.  
  
Harry clears her voice, hoping that she doesn’t sound shaky. “I know you’re really angry at me, and I know that what I did was really fucking wrong, but I just wanted to say that from the bottom of my heart I’m so sorry.”  
  
Ted nods and takes a sip of his coffee, “I-” he pauses and thinks for a second, “I just don’t understand why you left. What happened?”  
  
Harry scratches a spot on her head, fiddling with her fingers. “To put it simply, I just got cold feet. I just really did not want to marry you at all, I-”  
  
“But why?”  
  
“We were moving too fast Ted. I’m not going to lie and say that I didn’t feel anything for you, but when you had proposed to me at Stuart's I felt like I was being trapped. You started picking out venues and signing us up for wedding magazines and food tastings. It was all getting to be too much.”  
  
He glares at her, “Why didn’t you say anything?”  
  
Harry rolls her eyes, “Oh please, you never listened to me. I told you when we were laying down in bed, when we were at my mom’s, even after I fucking accepted the proposal that we were moving a bit too fast. You know what you said to me each time? You said and I fucking quote ‘Your just a little nervous is all’. What the fuck do nerves have to with not wanting to get married?”  
  
“Did you even fucking love me at all?”  
  
Harry was speechless, she was absolutely thrown off by the question. But as quickly as he had asked, she knew the answer. “Ted-”  
  
“So when you said you love me it was a lie?” He asks.  
  
Harry sighs, “At the time I thought I loved you, but after awhile I realized that it wasn’t that kind of love. I loved you as a friend. When we would have fun, and talk, and just enjoy each other company was when I was the happiest. When we would act like a couple and do couple-ly things I was so unhappy, I didn’t say anything because I just thought that that was how it was supposed to be.”  
  
“This is fucking bullshit. You're acting like I forced you into getting married.” He says getting defensive, which is exactly what Harry expected him to do when she agreed to meet up. He had always been that way throughout their relationship, got defensive over every little thing. It sickened Harry when he got like that, or when he would put the blame on everyone but himself.  
  
Although it does pain Harry to admit that he is right, she does. “You didn’t, and you’re right, I’m sorry if I made it seem like you did. Not everything is your fault, I can admit that I did go along with it, even though I didn’t want to which is so fucking stupid of me. I didn’t come here to argue with you. I just wanted to come and say that I’m sorry,”  
  
Ted nods, “I’m sorry too, I don’t want to argue either. And you’re right, I did sorta push you. I’m sorry for putting you in such a predicament that you didn’t tell me at all.”  
  
“So wha-”  
  
“Can we speak alone for a second?”  
  
Harry nods, smiling over at Louis who in return smiles back and walks towards the terrace, “Don’t worry, I know when I’m not needed.”  
  
Once the doors are closed Ted is quick to ask, “How do you know her?”  
  
Harry sighs, “Well…after I left the church, I stopped inside this dingy bar on the outskirts of Seattle in my wedding dress, and I meet her. We went to the same college, and coincidentally enough we were in the same class for a little while.” Harry notes from a late night conversation they had when the both of them couldn’t sleep, taking comfort in the others company. “She’s a really amazing person. She propositioned me, and I said fuck it and we went on a little road trip. I think I really needed it ya know?”  
  
Ted nods and smiles, “You really like her don’t you?”  
  
Harry blushes and blows out a huge breath. “I mean, she’s a great person. I- we really bonded during our time together.”  
  
He takes a sip of his drink, offering Harry some to which she respectfully declines. He murmurs, “Yeah, but do you _like_ her?”  
  
“Yeah like a f-friend?” Harry silently curses, not meaning for it to come out like a question.”  
  
“I’m just saying, you guys have only been here for a few minutes but…the way she looks at you, I can tell you mean a great deal to her.”  
  
Harry hums, not knowing what to say.  
  
“I know this is weird to say, but just…love her more than you have ever loved me. Be honest with her, and stop putting others feelings above your own. And again, I’m sorry that I silenced you, and I hope you are happy with whoever you decide to share your love with in the future.”  
  
“Okay,”  
  
Harry looks around for a bit, Ted goes and brings back some tea, they stay and sit down for a while. It starts to get a little awkward when his parents come home and give Harry the silent treatment. And after receiving one too many looks of disgust from Ted mother Harry makes up an excuse to leave. They head out to the car and Harry gives Ted a quick hug before getting inside the car.  
  
“Thanks for having us over,” Harry exclaims, “I’m really glad we got to talk.”  
  
“It was really nice seeing you, and I hope we can at least continue to be friends?” Ted says, smacking his hand lightly against the hood of the car, making Scooby jump in the back.  
  
Harry nods, “Of course, I’ll call you soon.”  
  
“Good, see ya.”  
  
“Bye,” They say in unison. Louis turns on her GPS and starts up the car and heads down the road.

“Were a little late, but I texted them and they said it was okay. It should only take me like one minute to secure the deal,”  
  
Harry snorts, “Why are talking like that? It’s like you about to make a drug deal.”  
  
Louis gives Harry a serious look, “Dogs are my drug Harry, this isn’t an ordinary deal. I’m about to get a beautiful sibling for Scooby,”  
  
“What are you naming them?”  
  
Louis reaches out and grabs Harry’s hand, intertwining their fingers, a smirk on her face as she stares turns into a driveway. “Your naming him,”  
  
Harry immediately perked up, sitting up straight. “Really? Oh my god!”  
  
Louis laughs and squeezes Harry’s hand some more, as Harry gawks at the house in front of them, it’s the same model as Ted’s but slightly bigger and less modernize. “Holy shit,” Louis says, “I wish I could afford a house like this, but I am too fucking broke.”  
  
Louis gives the person a call, and soon an older couple makes their way out of the house with a small golden retriever puppy running behind them. Louis gets out of the car with an envelope and the little puppy immediately starts nipping at her feet. Once Louis hands over the envelope she picks up the little guy and waves goodbye to the previous owners. She quickly makes her way back to the car and sits the puppy down on Harry’s lap.

The puppy immediately licks at Harry’s face making her squeal with joy. “Oh my god! Louis, he’s perfect, he looks like the perfect little brother for Scooby.” At the sound of his name Scooby barks once which makes the puppy bark as well. Harry sits him in the back and watch as he interacts with Scooby. He runs around in the backseat for a little while before slowly making his way to where Scooby is sat. He starts sniffing at Scooby’s ear, whining at him and making Scooby sniff him back. After a while he cuddles next to Scooby making Harry coo at them, “This is so freaking cute, Louis!” Harry brings out her phone and snaps a few pictures.

“I knew Scooby would love his little brother,” Louis coos patting Scooby on the head. They drive out of the driveway and back onto the road, “So where do you want to go? To the beach or…”  
  
“What time is it?” She asks.  
  
“4:35,” Louis replies.  
  
Harry leans her head back, closing her eyes.“I just want to get out of this fucking town,”  
  
“Understandable,” Louis nods, “I know of another small beach town we can head to. It’s called Bodega Bay. We can go eat something, pick up some puppy food and supplies, go to the beach, and then stay there for the rest of the day.”  
  
“M’kay, let’s go.”  
  
It doesn’t take them long to get there, before that they stopped at a CVS and picked up the ingredients they needed to make sandwiches. They changed inside the car with the reddest faces. Harry tried her hardest not to even look in Louis’ direction, and Louis stayed silent the whole time and changed faster than Harry. They walked down to the beach and set up for the rest of the day. Harry makes the sandwiches while Louis walks Scooby and Peanut (took Harry a good thirty seconds to come up with the name).  
  
“Louis!” Harry yells down the beach, “Dinner is ready!”  
  
Louis runs over with a stupid grin on her face that makes Harry’s heart pound. “You are the best ever. It looks so goddamn good!”  
  
Harry blushes, “Nothing but the best from Chief Styles.”  
  
“I see,” Louis says, feeding the dogs first before sitting down on the blanket and chowing down. They talk and laugh for a while, having meaningless conversations about the weirdest things that come to mind.  
  
Harry wipes off her mouth, drinking some of her water before turning her attention to Louis. “Did you know that approximately forty-thousand Americans are injured by toilets each year?”

“Really? How do you know that?” Louis says with a mouth full of chips.

Harry grimaces as little chucks appear in the corner of her mouth. “I looked it up after I got stuck in a toilet.”  
  
Louis starts laughing so hard she starts choking, Harry immediately going into action, starts patting her back. Once Louis stops choking she quickly asks, “Holy shit, you have to fucking tell me how that happened.”  
  
“Well I was at my job, and we just had new toilets installed and I wanted to go check them out. I know it’s weird but the toilet talked. So I drank a whole bottle of water and went to the bathroom. I sat down on the toilet and when I was doing using it I couldn’t get up.  
  
Louis takes a sip of her water, “So you were just stuck to the toilet?”  
  
“Yeah!” Harry exclaims, “I had to call in my coworker who had to call my boss, who had to call the manufacturers. Turns out someone spilled super glue onto the toilet as they were installing it and it never fucking dried.”  
  
By the end of Harry’s story Louis was red from laughter, and in between breaths she says, “That’s like a fucking prank you do at school or some shit when your Fourteen. Did you not notice that you were sitting on something wet?”  
  
Harry frowns, “No. How is this my fault?”  
  
“I never said it was your fault. And I am so sorry that such a tragedy like that happened to you, god only knows the trauma you suffered at the hands of that damn toilet manufacturing company.”  
  
Harry rolls her eyes, “Har har har, and for your information, it hurt like a bitch to pry me off because of my leg hairs.”  
  
Louis shakes her head, “If that happened to me I would never come back to work ever again.”

They spend the rest of their time on the beach running after Scooby and Peanut. The only people left are some surfers and a man walking his dog halfway down the coast. Harry takes some pictures of Louis, and then of Scooby and Peanut. Everything is nice and peaceful until the white fluffy clouds start turning grey and gloomy. The once baby blue sky turns into a dark shade of gunmetal as more and more storm clouds roll in. It starts raining an hour later, and they quickly pack up everything, run to the car, and climb inside. Scooby and Peanut make there way to the back and immediately start to shake the water off of them.  
  
Sweaty and out of breath Harry looks over at Louis who is in the same state as her. She says breathless, “I didn’t even get to go in the water.” Harry wipes the mixture of sweat and rain water off of her forehead, a lazy grin on her face.  
  
“Next time,” Louis murmurs.

The car is completely silent as they both sit there for a while, Harry watches as the rain falls down the window, and listens as the thunder lights up the sky. Not saying anything Louis starts up the car and starts driving. She has a giddy look on her face as she turns onto the freeway.

“Where are we going?” Harry asks.

“Just sit back and enjoy the ride.” Louis grin, “We should be there in a few hours.”  
  
Harry nods and does as she’s told, she turns the radio up and grabs one of the beach towels, toweling herself off before sitting back.  
  
After passing a few more road signs, she sees that they are almost in San Francisco. Harry opens and closes her mouth for a second before deciding to hold her comment to herself. She thinks about how fondly Louis has talked about growing up in San Francisco and from the look on her face she can tell how giddy she is.  
  
She hesitates for a moment, but soon she breaks the silence, “Why did you decide to leave San Fran?”  
  
Louis sighs, “You’ve figured it out haven’t you?”  
  
Harry snorts, “We road past a sign that literally said how we’re almost in San Francisco.”  
  
“I wanted it to be a surprise.” Louis shrugs, biting her lip, “Anyway, I decided to leave because I just wanted to.”  
  
Harry watches Louis for a moment, watches her gnaw on her lip and mouth the lyrics to a song that Harry doesn’t know. She takes Louis’s hand and rubs her thumb over her knuckles, staring out of the window when Louis looks at her, trying to hide her grin. Harry blurts, “Remember Mr.Chapels psych class?”  
  
“That man was insane! Remember when he showed up to class one day and all he did was roll around on his Heely’s? For an entire month!” Louis babbled.  
  
Harry nods, “Remember when he gave us our midterm test and the only question on it was ‘who are you’, and everyone put down some philosophical answer and like…you and I and five other kids put our name down and fucking left? Everyone who wrote a full-blown paper got a B+.”  
  
“I was so tired and fed up with the shenanigans he would pull. The fucking question had nothing to do with psych, and I didn’t even fucking care anymore so I put ‘Louis mother f’ing Tomlinson’. He gave me a one hundred.”  
  
“What!” Harry cried out, “He gave me a freaking ninety-five and I put ‘I don’t know’.”  
  
Louis smirks and glances over at her. “Should have put down _Harry Cox_ , that would have gotten you a one hundred for sure.”  
  
Harry shakes her head and crosses her arms, “Mr.Chapels was a giant man-child.”  
  
“The best thing he has ever done was when we were going over everything that had to do with sleep and he showed up in pj’s carrying a big pillow and went to sleep on the table.”

Harry laughed and moved her stick hair from her face. “To be fair it was an assignment. He told us to write down everything that he did while sleeping during that time.”  
  
“Which was snore, talking a little bit, and change positions three times.” Louis hissed.  
  
“Still can’t believe that during that class we had we never talked to each other. The only reason I remembered you name back when we met at the bar is because of you playing soccer.”  
  
“Yeah, we should have made more of an effort.” Louis smiles at her and squeezes their clasped hands.

It’s quiet after that, the squeaking of the windshield wipers and the low hum of a familiar Passenger song on the radio makes the silence a lot more comfortable. It’s not long before they pass a ‘WELCOME TO SAN FRANCISCO’ sign passing by colorful homes on the driver's side and the ocean on the passenger's side. Harry looks out at the angry gray waves crashing against the rocks as they ride on the Golden Gate Bridge. She rolls down her window for a brief second, there are only a few other cars that ride past them as Louis pulls over and stops the car. The sounds of the ocean below them and the dogs snores drowns out the completely silence as they stare in awe. Harry hangs half of her body hanging out of the car as she takes pictures up and down the bridge. Once she’s done Louis rolls down her window as well and they slowly make their way off of the bridge. Harry’s hair blows around in the wind like a tornado, she hears Louis giggle beside her.  
  
“Can’t wait to see you develop those.”  
  
Harry smiles, “Are there any film develop shops in Encinitas?”  
  
“A couple yeah,”  
  
“Coolio,”  
  
Louis grins, driving around for a while until she spots a hotel. “Coolio indeed. Let’s stop here for the rest of the day. I call dibs on the shower!”  
  
Harry snaps her fingers, “Darn it, I was just about to call it.”  
  
Louis wags her fingers, “Almost all of this trip you have taken you showers first, now it’s my time to experience fresh warm water.”  
  
Harry rolls her eyes and stuffs her knapsack with all of her and Louis' things they won't be able to carry in the storm. “You grab Scooby, and I’ll take Peanut.”  
  
“What about the suitcases?”  
  
“Fuck ‘em…” Harry thinks for a second, “Let’s…grab our suitcases first, take them into the lobby and then come back for them.”  
  
Louis agrees and they do just that, only managing to come out a little bit more wet than they did when it first started. The stickiness of the rain makes Harry uncomfortable, and all the fact that they are only wearing their bathing suits. The older lady behind the desk smiles at them, Harry notices the rainbow pin on her cream sweater. They both walk up to her and Louis asks for a two bedroom suite. The lady types on her computer for a second.  
  
“I’m sorry, the only thing that’s available is a one bedroom suite, a lot of tourists came in once the storm started and toke ‘em all. Sorry girls,”  
  
“It’s okay,” Louis says. She looks at Harry for a second, trying to gage on what she wanted to do. Harry just shrugged and mouthed _‘I don’t care’_. Louis nodded and smiles to the lady, “I guess we’ll take it. How much is the room?” Louis pays the amount quickly, and the lady hands them the keys with a wink. Harry’s eyes widen and she blushed profusely while Louis laughs nervously and the tips of her ears turn red. They head up to the suite. When they get inside Louis beelines to the bathroom with her suitcase leaving them all alone. Harry looks around and observes the suite, it’s a normal motel with a bed, a desk with two chairs, a dresser with a small flat screen tv, and a mirror next to it. Harry grows increasingly nervous as she thinks about Louis sleeping in the same bed as her. She exhales and takes the leashes off of the dogs before sitting down in one of the chairs. She hears the shower turn on a minute later and starts to yawn, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.  
  
The whizzing of the ceiling fan keeps Harry awake. She looks over at the dogs and finds them sleeping on a dog bed in one of the corners of the room. It makes Harry smile.  
  
When Louis is done and out of the shower Harry goes in with her suitcase. She takes her time washing all of the sand and stickiness out of her hair and off of her body. The heat soothes her headache and calms her nerves about sleeping in the same bed as Louis. When she’s done she towels off, brushes her teeth, and puts on a random shirt and pajama bottoms. Harry wraps her hair in a towel before leaving the bathroom, and as she drags her suitcase out she glances at Louis who is already on the bed tipping on her phone.  
  
“Tomorrow is going to be so fucking fun, Haz.” Louis gushed.  
  
Harry hesitantly walks over to the edge of the bed, almost tripping over her feet. She sits down and pulls out her phone, shooting a quick text to the family group chat Gemma made a couple of days ago. Afterward, she plays a few games, trying to take her mind off of Louis laying right next to her. Her heart starts to quicken when she finally starts getting tired, Harry sits her phone done onto the side table and gets under the fresh white fluffy sheets.  
  
“You tired too?” Louis asks.  
  
Harry whispers, “Yeah, goodnight.”  
  
“Goodnight, Haz.”  
  
At first, they fall asleep with their back to each other, but in the middle of the night when Harry goes to the bathroom and gets back under the covers, in a sleepy haze she feels Louis turn over. It jolts Harry out of her sleep, she can feel Louis' breath tickling the hairs on her neck. Her heart starts pounding, and her breathing gets quicker. Butterflies start to fill her stomach, tingles going down from her head to her toes. To try and combat what’s happening Harry turns around and is startled to see that Louis is awake.

“Lou?” Harry mumbles in the dark.

Louis blinks saying nothing. She starts getting closer and closer until their noses are almost touching, her breath tickling Harry’s face. Harry thinks that this is the hottest and strangest thing that has ever happened to her and _holy shit_. Louis connects their lips, and they’re just as soft as Harry remembers them to be. Soft thin lips that like fruit from early that day. It’s nice and slow for a while, her tongue makes its way into Louis' mouth and they slowly massage their tongues against the others. There is no fighting for dominance or any of that cliche bullshit (Harry’s words) their equal, moving together in unison. Louis' hand creeps up her thigh, slowly massaging it with her palm. Harry worms her hands onto Louis' hips, pulling up her shirt and feeling the soft skin there. They part for a second to breath, quickly kissing again. When they do the kissing gets more aggressive, Louis' hand moves from her thigh to her ass, gripping it harshly. Harry rolls on her back and Louis rolls on top of her straddling her hips, for a second everything is fine, and then Louis tries to take off Harry’s top. Harry panicked, not wanting to have sex when she didn't even know if they were even in a relationship, or what even is this. “W-wait,”  
  
Louis quickly pulls back, “Are you okay? What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”  
  
Harry shakes her head even though she knows Louis can’t see her. “I don’t want to have sex, I just want to kiss ya know?” Her voice is shaky as she says it and she starts to shake when Louis doesn’t say anything. “I mean w-”  
  
“It’s okay,” Louis breathes out, getting off of Harry and sitting beside her. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. You just want to kiss right?”  
  
“Yeah, just kiss,”  
  
“Just kiss,” Louis says before grabbing Harry’s face and bringing it to hers. They falling asleep in each other's arms giving lazy kisses anywhere in reach.

**-**

  
  
Louis wakes up before Harry like always, already freshened up and dressed. She walks over and kisses Harry on the forehead. “Rise and shine!” she exclaimed, “We have to go, I want you to meet some of my best friends in the entire world.”  
  
Harry groans and sits up slowly, grimacing at how nasty her morning breath is. “What’s there names?”  
  
“You’ll see once you get your lazy ass up and get ready.” Louis grabs ahold of Harry’s hands and starts pulling her up. Once she’s on her feet Harry swats her away and heads inside the bathroom, sleepily dragging her suitcase with her. Once inside she freshens up and puts a little product in her hair, scrunching it and tossing her curls every which way until they looked nice and curly. After that Harry scours her suitcase for something clean to wear and settles on some shorts and a black and white striped shirt. She leaves the bathroom and the first thing she notices is that none of Louis’ things are here.

“Where is everything?” she asks as she leaves her suitcase by the door.  
  
Louis looks up from her phone and smiles, “I already packed the car up, just waiting for you to put on your shoes and we can leave.  
  
Harry rolls her eyes before putting on her glasses. “I’m ready,” Louis hands her Peanuts leash as she leads Scooby out of the room. When they passed by the lobby and say goodbye to the owner she gives them a quick wave and a wink that again, makes Harry blush.  
  
Harry loads up the car and puts Peanut in the back when she notices the clean exterior and interior. In the back seat, there were no more discarded water bottles or dog hair, a torn thin blanket was draped under both dogs. “What did you do to the back? It looks clean for once.” Harry asks as she climbs inside.  
  
Harry can see Louis trying to contain a smile. “Whatever do you mean?” She says.  
  
“The car is cleaned inside and out.”  
  
Louis smiles, starting up the car and heading out on the road to an unknown destination. “Well, ya see…”  
  
“Louis,” Harry warns, although there is no real intent behind it.  
  
“Okay okay, I cleaned out the car because I have to hand it back today.”  
  
Harry frowns, “What are you talking about?”  
  
“This isn’t my car,”  
  
“This isn’t your car,” Harry nods, trying to process what Louis has just said. “Umm…who’s car is this then? Did you _steal_ a car?”  
  
“No! Why did you automatically conclude that I stole this car?”

Harry shrugs, “I can see you doing something like that for fun.”

“Why would I- never mind. Anyway, this is my friend Liam’s car. I used it for the trip because it would have been a lot easier, plus this takes up a lot less gas money than my van.

Harry balks, “You have a van!”

Louis nods, ”It isn’t a creepy van tho, it’s cool.”

“Oh my god, you're like the Scooby Doo gang,”

Louis laughs hard, banging one hand on the steering wheel. “How the hell did you get the Scooby Doo gang out of me owning a van?”  
  
“You literally have a dog named Scooby and you own a van,”  
  
“Aww,” Louis peers over at Harry and grins, her eye crinkle and it makes Harry’s heart thump faster, something that seems to happen around Louis lately. “You should have named Peanut Scrappy.” At the sound of his name Peanut barks in the backseat. “See, even he agrees with me.”  
  
Harry shakes her head and turns around in her seat and grabs Peanut. She kisses the top of his head and gives him scratches and pats, saying little terms of endearment. “Scrappy, is a horrible name right Peanut?” Peanut licks Harry’s hand, “See, he hates that name.” Harry cuddles him for the whole ride to wherever Louis is taking them. They past by a bunch of colorful homes and apartments, almost all were painted a soft pastel. It made Harry feel warm inside knowing that this place is where Louis grew up and how fucking excited she is to show Harry around, to let her in on her own world that she built here, a colorful city that matches her bright personality. Harry would be excited to show Louis around Richmond but it’s nowhere near as exciting or cool looking than San Francisco. Richmond is one of those towns where if you blink you would miss it. The most exciting things that it has is the beach and the movies.  
  
Louis pulls into a random apartment complex’s parking lot. “Be right back,” she says taking Peanut out of her lap and grabbing Scooby out of the back, disappearing into the building with them in tow. _Weird_ , Harry thought. She waits around in the car for a solid thirty minutes before Louis comes back, the dogs nowhere to be found. Louis entered the car jittery and excited. Harry frowned, “Where are the dogs?”  
  
Louis started up the car and headed off into a random direction, “They are at an old friends house. She promised to keep them while we hang out today,”  
  
“You could have told me,” Harry says.  
  
“I’m sorry, I had to get there soon before she went to the park without them, she’s a dog walker.” Louis turns down a random street and now they're really in the heart of the city. A lot more people are walking but there are still tons of cars. The city moves as one, everyone seems to know everyone and it reminds Harry of back home. Louis speaks up after a few minutes have passed between them, “Anyway after our next stop me, you, Zayn, and Liam are going to get something to eat,” Louis explains after turning into another random parking lot in front of a weird looking building.  
  
Harry leans forward and peers up at the oddly shaped building, it looked so out of place to the rest of the area. Harry scrunched up her nose,“Where are we?”  
  
Louis looks at her and grins, “We are at San Francisco’s own,” Louis pauses and drums her fingers on the steering wheel, “Museum of Modern Arts!”  
  
Harry’s eyes widen at the realization, her mouth is slightly agape as she takes in Louis' words. “No fucking way!” She shakes her head and looks back up at the building. “No wonder it looked so freaking weird on the outside,”  
  
Louis blushes and tosses her hair about, “I just uh…wanted to take you here after our conversation a while back.”  
  
“You remembered?”  
  
“Yeah, of course,” Before Harry can say anything Louis jumps out of the car and Harry quickly grabs her bag and slams the door shut, walking to Louis' side. They quickly walk inside and pay the admission, “let's head inside and go see some pretentious art.”  
  
Harry rolls her eyes, “Shut up, it’s not pretentious.”  
  
“I beg to differ Styles,”  
  
They walk around for a while, Harry gawks at everything, and since this being her first museum trip since elementary school she tries and documents everything on camera. She tries to take artsy photos of Louis but after a while, Harry gave up and just took pictures of the paintings and sculptures After twenty minutes of walking around, Louis starts to whisper little snide remarks about the art to Harry. It makes her annoyed but she tries to get over it. They stay for two of the many ongoing exhibits. The first one is called _Howl_ and it makes Louis snort.  
  
She subtly whispers into Harry’s ear, “Great story but what the hell is this suppose to be?”  
  
Harry ignores her and they move on. The second exhibit called _Approaching American Abstraction_ has Louis rolling her eyes.  
  
“This is what I mean by pretentious,” she whispers.  
  
Harry points to one of the paintings and mutters, “The art is so fucking beautiful, you’re just not looking with your artistic eye.”  
  
And without a beat, Louis whispers in her ear, “Your more beautiful babe, the best fucking art in here is standing right next to me.”  
  
Harry shakes her head and leaves Louis behind inside the exhibit. Louis’s comment was cute and all but it still doesn’t excuse the way Louis had been acting all day. She can hear Louis' footsteps behind her but she doesn’t slow down until Louis grabs ahold of her arm, “What’s wrong?”  
  
Harry snatches her arm back, “Your acting like a dick,” she whispers, “If you didn’t like it why the fuck did you take us here?”  
  
“Because you liked it, I told you I don’t really care for this shit. Yeah, it’s really damn cool and I appreciate art and all but-”  
  
Harry shakes her head, “The least you could have done is pretend to freaking like it instead of complaining about how all the paintings and exhibits are pretentious and stupid.” Harry looks around, “Look, I don’t want to cause a scene, I've seen all that I wanted to see. Let’s just go,” Harry walks out onto the parking lot and walks back to the car. When Louis unlocks the doors she gets inside without a word, slamming the door.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Louis starts, “I didn’t mean to ruin this experience for you. I know that I was acting a bit shitty and that’s unacceptable.  
  
Harry sighs uncrossing her arms, “Apology accepted asshole,”  
  
Louis leans over and kisses her cheek. She starts up the car and pulls out, the ride around for a while but Harry barely pays attention to her surroundings. All she can think about is Louis' comment at the museum. _Am I gay?_ she asks herself. Something like that had never really crossed her mind. She knew it was plausible given her attraction to Louis, but she knew for a fact that Louis couldn’t have been the only girl she was attracted to. She thinks for a minute and sorta remembers a girl from her middle school that she might have had a crush on. But at that time she thought that she was jealous because of how popular she was. But now she’s thinking she might have had a crush on that girl. She frowns because it doesn’t explain her attractions for men. She thinks for a second, _am I really attracted to guys?_  
  
The silence of car made Harry wince as she asked, “Louis, when did you know you were gay?”  
  
“Oh, umm.” It takes Louis a while to answer, and it makes Harry anxious and sweaty. “I guess I sorta always knew? In middle school, I had crushes on girls, but I never acted on in it out of fear so I tried to date guys and I just really wasn’t feeling it. Yeah, we had fun but the idea of being with a guy and like, sex with him, or even loving a guy kinda freaked me out so my relationships never went past five months. During the end of high school, I kinda didn’t give a fuck. I thought I live in such a progressive city why am I so afraid of being who I am? So that month after the end of junior year I went to my first pride parade which was so fucking crazy. And that night at pride I called and told my mom.”  
  
Harry hesitated to ask, “Did she…accept you?”  
  
A wide grin spread onto Louis' face, “Yeah,”  
  
Shyly, Harry started to fiddle with her fingers. “What did it feel like?”  
  
“It felt so freeing,” Louis sighed and stopped at a red light, turning to look at Harry. “I started crying over the phone and it just…I-It felt so good to tell her,” Harry watches as Louis wipes away a tear, it makes her feel guilty for enticing that sort of emotion for Louis that she immediately starts apologizing. “It’s okay Curly. It’s not sad tears, they’re happy. It happens every time I tell that story.”  
  
“I might be a lesbian as well,” Harry says, mostly to herself, but loud enough so Louis can hear as well. It feels weird to say, but at the same time it felt good in all the right ways. Like she was coming home to herself.

Louis looks at her, takes her hand and squeezes it. “That’s okay!” Louis gushed. “I know that it’s hard to come to terms with, it was hard for me to do it, but once I realized that I really didn’t have feelings for men at all, it felt so damn _good_.”  
  
Harry shrugs, “I just…I almost married a man so I’m confused on if I was in love with him or-” Harry shakes her head, “It’s stupid,”  
  
Louis pulls into another apartment complex, she parks and fully turns her attention to Harry. “There have been a lot of lesbians who have married men, and if you have the same feelings for women as you do men then you could be bi or pan?”  
  
Harry sighs, “That’s the thing! I don’t freaking know.” She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, “When I was with Ted it felt…wrong in a way because I don't really love him the way he loved me. I felt like I was lying to him and to myself, I was trying to make myself love him. When we first got together it was fun and all, but after a while what I thought I had sort of died down into nothing but I was just so scared to tell him what I really felt.”  
  
“You’ll figure it out soon, and when you do it’s going to feel so damn good.” Louis smiles and grabs both of Harry’s hands, kissing them.  
  
Harry blushes, “Hopefully I figure it out soon.”  
  
“Don’t worry too much ab-” A knock on the passenger's side window startled them both. Harry quickly turned around to find two girls waving at them both. One girl had the longest dirty blond hair Harry had ever seen, it reached all the way to her hips. She was wearing denim shorts and a white shirt, a big smile on her face as she waved at them. The other girl was waving with a slight smile on her face, her black hair was in a bun and her eyes were covered by sunglasses. She was wearing the same styles shorts as the blond girl but with a black shirt that said ‘cool kids don’t dance’ in red block letters. Harry immediately looked at Louis, she could feel her cheeks burning red.  
  
Louis waved back and looked at Harry, a smirk on her face. “Oh my god…”  
  
“It’s not like that,” Harry squeaked, “They’re just really attractive.”  
  
Louis laughed and shook her head, she unlocked the door and both girls shuffled inside. They immediately reached over the console and hugged Louis, saying loud _hi’s_ and _hello’s_ and _I miss you’s_. When they were done catching up Harry looked back and waved, saying a small hello.  
  
“Helloooo, and who is this beaut right here Lou?” The blond girl says, making Harry blush.  
  
Louis rolled her eyes, “Harry, these knuckled heads are my best friend's Zayn and Niall. Zayn and Niall this is Harry, and she’s with me so back off blondie.”  
  
Niall reached over and gave Harry a hug. “Nice to meet you, babe,”  
  
“It’s nice to meet you too,”  
  
Zayn stuck out her hand with a smile, “Hello, Harry.”  
  
Harry shook it, “Hello, Zayn.”  
  
Louis started up the car and left the parking lot. “Let’s go get some lunch and then fuck around the rest of the day.”  
  
Niall whooped in the back before turning her attention to her phone. “Soooo,” she says, “What were you guys talking about before we graced you with our presence?”  
  
With ease, Louis says, “None of your damn business blondie.”  
  
“When are you heading down to Encinitas?” Zayn asks.  
  
“We leave tomorrow night,”  
  
Niall huffs and whines, “Awe, no far! We don’t get back until September sixteen.”  
  
“That’s only a month you goober,” Zayn says, shaking her head.  
  
Niall huffs and crosses her arms. They make it to the restaurant with no hiccups, going in and sitting down in a booth. Harry mostly stays quiet as Louis and Niall go back and forth with each other with Zayn chiming in a small bit. She sips on her lemonade and patiently waits for her sandwich and fries to come. “So Harry, how did you two meet, and how did Louis convince you to go on one her impromptu road trip?” Niall questions.  
  
Like a deer in headlights, Harry stares wide-eyed at Niall, not knowing what to say. Louis immediately chimes in, “None of your nosy business blondie. Why don’t you tell us how you almost burned all of your blond locks off during the Fourth of July.” Niall immediately starts telling the story, and Harry breathes a sigh of release. She grabs Louis' hand, squeezing it tightly, _thank you_. Louis squeezes back, _your welcome_.  
  
The food comes shortly after and they dig in, staying for a few minutes even, when everyone is done, to talk for a little. They all chip in on the check and leave. They stop at the beach for a while, Harry keeps her distance as Louis and Zayn look to be having a deep conversation. She entertains Niall for a while, and they banter back and forth. Harry takes a few pictures of them when they aren’t looking and laughs so hard she starts crying when Niall tries to throw Zayn in the ocean. They head back to Zayn and Niall’s apartment to hang out for a while.  
  
Niall lays her head in Zayn’s lap smiling up at her.. She looks over at Harry, “Soooo, do you live in Encinitas too?”  
  
Harry shakes her head, “I live in Washington. Louis and I met at a bar there. I-”  
  
Louis stops playing with her hair, “You don’t have to tell them H.”  
  
Harry nods and looks up at Louis. “It’s okay. Anyway, I had just left my ex-fiance at the altar that afternoon, so I was in this big poofy wedding dress feeling like shit. Louis sat next to me, I got drunk, we talked, she took me back to her motel, and originally I was heading to my sister's house in Seattle but before I got there Louis came and she asked me if I wanted to come along and as you can see I said yes,”  
  
Niall smiled, “That’s really cool. Sorry if this is personal, but why did you leave your ex-fiance.”  
  
“Uhh, I just realized that I didn’t love him after trying to deny it for so long. Now, after talking to him, I’m trying to realize what I am because I do have feelings for women. It’s been a short but at the same time a long process.” Harry grabbed Louis' hand and squeezed it, the first time she’s ever shown her affection for Louis in front of people. It felt nice.  
  
They sat around for a while and Harry eventually fell asleep in Louis' lap as she played with her hair. She woke up in the middle of the night to Louis silently snoring next to her, her arms wrapped her middle and a blanket thrown over them. The couch was reclined, and Harry turned slightly and didn’t see Niall or Zayn. She turned her attention back to Louis and kisses her lightly, trying not to wake her up. Harry watch her breathe, chest rising and falling slowly. And because she is such a sap, it makes her heart flutter. With a grin on her face, she tucks herself closer to Louis and falls asleep.

-

  
  
Harry wakes up to the clatter of pots and pans. She looks around and finds that she’s sleeping on Louis' chest, who is still asleep. She traces her tattooed armed lightly, trying her best not to disturb her. After a while of playing a dumb game of Tic-tac-toe with her tattoo, Harry carefully removes herself from Louis' hold and tries to look for the source of the obnoxious sound. She locates the source in the kitchen, and finds Niall and Zayn wrestling with the pots and pans. She laughs, startling them both. “What are you guys doing?” Harry leans against the counter and watches as they continue to try and get a pot out of the cabinet.  
  
“We were trying to make you guys breakfast but I can’t find any fucking pans!” Niall exclaims.  
  
Zayn rolls her eyes, “There are three pans in the back if she would reach through and get them, instead of being lazy.”  
  
“Where?”  
  
Zayn pushed Niall out of the way and pulled out three pans, “Here idiot.”  
  
Niall looked between both girls. “Oh.” she grumbled, “Well, those must have just appeared after you summoned them because I checked and-”  
  
Zayn stood up and placed the pots on the stove, “Please be quiet and start making the eggs. Harry, can you put some bread in the oven, two for each of us? I’ll make the bacon,”  
  
Niall hugged Zayn’s leg as she walked over to the fridge and grinned at Harry, “She loves me,”  
  
“Sadly,” Zayn mutters, making Niall pout. Harry does as told and sits at the small dining table, watching as the other girls make the rest of the breakfast.  
  
Once everything is done and the plates have been set, Harry goes over to Louis to wake her up. “Lou,” she whispers, shaking her shoulders, “Wakey wakey.” It takes some time but Louis eventually shoots up like a rocket.  
  
She groans and rubs the sleep out of her eyes, looking up at Harry with a frown on her face that immediately changes to a smile. “Am I in heaven?”  
  
Harry rolls her eyes, “No you big lug, now get up and come eat.” She pulls Louis up off the couch and they walk back to the dining table. Louis sits next to Harry and continues to smile at her.  
  
“Hi,” she practically whispers.  
  
Harry blushes, “Hi,”  
  
Niall groans, “Okay okay! We get it you to are in love, now can Z hurry her big ass on so we can eat as a family!”

Harry rubs her temple and takes a sip of her coffee.

Zayn comes in holding a tray of orange juice and sets them down in front of everyone. Once she’s done she sits down and punches Niall in the arm. “There,” she smiles, “now we can eat.”  
  
Niall glares at Zayn before stuffing her face full of eggs and toast. They eat in silence for all of three seconds before Niall starts to complain about how no one thanked her and how she’s never making them food again.  
  
Louis scoffs and drinks some of her orange juice. “You never even cook, Liam’s the one who cooks the most.”  
  
“Hey!” Zayn cries, “I’m the one who cooks the most! All you do Louis, is complain about how the food isn’t done fast enough like Niall.”  
  
“I would cook more if you guys let me,” Louis says.  
  
Harry looks at them confused, “Why aren’t you allowing Louis to cook?”  
  
Niall speaks first, “Because she almost burned her apartment trying to make ramen.”  
  
Harry laughs, “How can you fuck up ramen.”  
  
“That’s what the I said!” Zayn blurted.  
  
Louis sits her fork down loudly, “It wasn’t my fault that I didn’t put enough water in the pot so after it all evaporated the noodles kinda burned at the bottom of the pan for an hour.”  
  
“An hour?” Harry shook her head, “How did you not smell it burning?”  
  
“I was doing laundry and I forgot that I left the stove on. But on the bright side, nothing caught on fire!”  
  
Niall bangs her fist on the table from laughing, “The only reason we found out,” she says swallowing a mouth full of food, “Is because we saw the pan and the burnt up noodles in the garbage.”  
  
They all share a laugh while Louis pouts. After breakfast is done they clean up and lay around the apartment all day. They talk and laugh and watch reruns of The Office all day. They each take small cat naps here and there throughout the day and before they know it it’s five o'clock. None of them come up with something to do, and since Harry and Louis are leaving at ten, they enjoy each others company, the remainder of their time still looming over them like a dark storm cloud. They start sharing childhood memories that leave Harry feeling jealous but also pleased. Jealous because growing up she didn’t have as many friends as they all did, but happy that she’s gained new ones.  
  
“When I was six years old,” Harry reminisces, “My mom use to make me dress up as a lamb for every holiday except Halloween, and do this silly dance and song while my sister was dressed as Little Bo-Peep.”  
  
“Oh that’s nothing,” Niall says, “From the ages of three to five my mom tried to make me dress up as Shirley Temple every Halloween. She’d trick me into thinking I was wearing princess dresses when in reality they were fake costumes of Shirley Temples outfits.” Niall visibly shudders while the rest of them coo at her.  
  
“I bet you were so freaking cute with your pin curls and everything.” Harry coos.  
  
Niall slaps Harry’s thigh lightly, “Stop making my childhood trauma cute! I looked _horrible_!”  
  
“I bet you even had rosy cheeks and frilly knee socks,” Zayn smooshes Niall’s face.  
  
Niall fakes cries, “She pinched them and everything, it hurt so bad.”  
  
“At least you wanted to dress up like a princess!” Louis blurts out, “My mom had to wrestle me in a dress even though I wanted to be the red power range.”  
  
Harry pouts, “I was the yellow power ranger when I was ten.”  
  
Louis glares at her, “Lucky.” Harry cuddles closer to her, wrapping her arm around her shoulders. Louis smiles slightly and covers it up with a laugh. “Smooth,” she whispers in her ear.  
  
Harry blushes and looks towards the television. They talk some more about random things that come to mind, a soft breeze blows through the room from the balcony and it makes Harry shiver. Louis wraps the blanket tighter around them and Harry feels so warm and soft and mushy that she pecks her on the cheek in front of the other girls.  
  
“So…what are you two gonna do when you get to Encinitas?” Zayn asks, taking a sip of her beer.  
  
Harry tries to answer a couple of times but no full sentences come out. “I mean. I guess…” She guesses she’s going to have to take a flight back to Gemma’s apartment in Seattle and figure out where to go from there. It makes her feel immense sadness at the thought of leaving Louis, but at the same time they’ve just met and Harry doesn’t want to go too fast if this is a start to a relationship. Her eyes widen and her mouth runs dry at the thought because she doesn’t know what this is, or even what she is.  
  
Louis carts a hand through Harry’s hair, soothing her thoughts. “We’ll figure it out when we get there.”  
  
Harry frowns and looks at her, “But Louis…”  
  
Louis shakes her head, “We leave in an hour, and I’d just like to not think about that right now. I want to remember these moments of you in my arms as we cuddle on the couch, in my hometown. We'll figure it out later.”  
  
Harry drops immediately, seeing the sparkle in Louis' eyes, and the way that her voice shakes, and how she’s looking at her. Harry nods and swallows a lump in her throat. And for Louis only she whispers,“Okay,”  
  
The hour goes by slow. They watch a short movie and keep the talking to a minimum, and before Harry knows it she’s hugging Zayn and Niall goodbye, exchanging numbers with them and promising to call soon. It takes Louis a while to say goodbye, so Harry waits in the car as she hugs them each, whispering in their ears and kissing their cheeks. When she’s done they head off and go pick up Scooby and Peanut, both dogs jumping up and running around, excited to see them. And on there way back to the car Harry asks, “Why don’t I drive for once?”  
  
Louis closes the door with a hard slam after putting the dogs in the back. She looks at Harry and snorts, “You don’t know the way there.”  
  
Harry shrugs, “I have GPS on my phone,”  
  
“I dunno…”  
  
“You drove the whole way there! Why don’t you sit back and relax while I drive to us there.”  
  
Harry watches as Louis contemplates, eventually, she sighs and hands over the keys much to Harry’s delight. She squeals and gets in the front seat. Harry immediately starts adjusting the seat and the rearview mirror, which makes Louis groan, “I had it in the perfect spot,”  
  
“Yeah,” Harry mutters, “the perfect spot for your short ass.” she pulls up her navigation on her phone and types in Encinitas and starts up the car. She grins and bangs on the steering wheel lightly, “I’m so freaking excited!”  
  
Louis gives her a look, “To drive?”  
  
“Yes!” Harry exclaims, “I love to drive.”  
  
Louis shakes her head and turns her head towards her window, “You really are a weird one Styles.”  
  
Harry follows the directions, leaving the hustle and bustle of the city and driving along the coast. Louis snores quietly beside her, and Harry rolls down her window slightly. The breeze and the smell of the ocean calms her down. She leaves all thoughts of the future out of her mind and only thinks about now. She thinks about how she got to this point in her life, sitting in the car of a gorgeous girl that she cares about so much. How she got to kissing her, and sleeping with her, and cuddling with her on strangers, now friends, couches while never wanting to leave her side. Tears form in her eyes as she thinks about the inevitable. As much as her heart wants too she can’t stay with Louis, it’ll be moving too fast in the relationship which killed her past relationship, also the fact that she might not be into men.  
  
Harry clears her head and breathes back in the ocean air. She only thinks about Louis, and her pretty blue eyes, beautiful smile, contagious laughter, and the way she makes you feel like your the most important person in the room. Harry wishes that she had Louis when she was growing up. She can see them now, as little girls getting into all sorts of trouble just for the fun of it. Not having to worry about boys, or her appearance all the time because Louis wouldn’t care, she’d still tell her she looks beautiful with acne, braces, and thick-rimmed glasses. Harry shutters when she thinks of her appearance when she was thirteen, and how much she had cared about what people thought of her.  
  
After driving for a few hours, Harry pulls into a twenty-four-hour gas station, she grabs some chips on her way out and throws them on her seat before pumping the gas. Once she’s done she starts the car back up and continues the onward.

 

-

 

Harry gets tired of the ocean smell nine hours into the drive to Encinitas, it makes her eyes water and her nose scrunch up every time she takes a whiff of it. Louis wakes up every few hours to check on her before going back into a deep sleep. Scooby and Peanut stay asleep the whole drive there. Harry rides right past Santa Cruise and Santa Barbara in a blur, there was no one out except for a few cars here and there. In Santa Monica, there is a bit of traffic because of a car crash but Harry keeps a level head and drives through it. She checks the GPS and nearly almost bangs her hand on the wheel when she notices they have three and a half hours until they get there.  
  
It’s dawn when Harry passes under the steel sign with _‘_ ENCINITAS’ in big white letters. There are no civilians in sight, and because Harry doesn’t know where Louis lives she continues to ride through the town. Driving slowly, she looks at every building and every house, wanting to soak up everything before she has to leave. She soon finds a road path towards down towards the beach and follows it there and parks on the sand, looking out towards the ocean. Harry climbs out of the car, careful not to wake Louis up, and watches the sunrise over the water. The sky is a mixture of blue and pink hues. The clouds swirl around each other, moving slowly through the sky. Harry wraps her arms tighter around herself as a breeze picks up.  
  
“It’s so pretty,” she whispers to herself.  
  
“Really is isn’t it?” Louis says startling her.  
  
Harry looks down at her converse clad feet and tells Louis everything that she’s been thinking. “I really like you, like, like you like you. It…I don’t know what my sexuality is, but I do know that I am attracted to women, and I do know that I can’t stand the thought of being too far away from you.”  
  
“Harry-”  
  
“When I first said yes to going on this trip with you, I never imagined in a million years that I would become completely infatuated with you. I…to be completely honest I’ve never felt that way with someone before, man or woman, I have never felt such a strong connection to someone like I’ve done you.” Harry wipes the tear that falls, “And it scares me. It scares me so much because I don’t want this to be the end, the end of us.”  
  
Louis walks over and pulls Harry into a tight hug. “This doesn’t have to be the end, you can…you can move here and we can be together.” She pulls away and grabs Harry’s face, “I don’t want to lose you, I’ve never felt something like this before either. I’ve loved very few women in my time, but I-I really fucking _like_ you. I…I know this will probably freak you out but I think I love you,”  
  
It’s silent after she says it. Harry’s whole body is frozen, and her mind goes blank. The seagulls above and the ocean makes her wince from the loudness of it all. Harry breaks down crying, “You can’t-”  
  
“Harry, you made this trip so much better, I didn’t even want to continue it until you showed up with your stupid big poofy wedding dress and pretty green eyes and soft pink lips,” Louis' eyes dart between her lips and her eyes, she leans in a little before pulling back and staring into Harry’s eyes. Her voice shakes when she says, “God I just want to kiss you,”  
  
It rocks Harry to her core, her heart speeds up and a blush rises to her cheeks but she isn’t embarrassed. “Kiss me you absolute fucking fool,” Harry says, voice barely above a whisper.  
  
Louis smacks their lips together, pulling her into a tight embrace. They pull apart and take shaky, shallow breaths before going at it again. Harry’s hands work their way around her body, squeezing her hips and pulling her in more closely. Louis pulls away and Harry’s attempt to kiss again makes her laugh. Breathless they stare deep into each other's eyes, still hugging.  
  
“Let’s not think right now okay?”  
  
Harry nodded, “Okay, then what should we do?”  
  
Louis thinks for a second before leaning in and giving Harry a quick peck on the lips, “I know this sounds crazy and stupid but I thought of this idea-”  
  
Harry rolls her eyes, squeezing Louis' hips. “Uh oh, this can’t be good.”  
  
“Shut up my ideas are amazing.” Louis smacks her butt and continues, “Also, I didn’t just think of this right now so we can stop being sad about the near future, but I was thinking of driving across the east coast next fall, and it would really fucking suck to do it alone. And remember I will track you down and keep bugging and asking you about it, so it would just be wise to say yes. Do you maybe wanna...tag along and help me plan this all out?"  
  
Harry pauses and thinks back to when Louis tracked her down to a gas station in the heart of Settle just so she could ask to go on this stupid but amazing road trip where they fall for each other in a matter of days like some stupid cliche romance movie. She thinks back to their disaster of a first kiss, and her stupid knock-knock jokes that Louis hated, although Harry knew she loved them secretly. To playing around with Scooby and adopting Peanut, talking to Ted, and meeting Niall and Zayn. She realizes that she doesn’t want to give all of that up. Doesn’t want to give up the chance of being happy.  
  
Harry leans in forward, she only wants Louis to hear. None of the beachgoers coming in with their load stereos and roaring engines as the town above them starts to wake.  
  
She embraces Louis once more, giving her a quick peck on the lips. Louis smiles, "What do you say?"

"Let's start planning!"

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If there are any spelling errors or anything please don't hesitate to tell me! Please reblog [here](http://aiienharry.tumblr.com/post/172894337051/oh-darling-my-hearts-on-fire-for-you-by)


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